


One Foot in the Grave

by telanaris



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Love Triangle, NSFW, OT3 FEELS, Plague, Prequel, Witchcraft, fleeting julian x mc x asra, lazaret, prepare for sad, probably canon-divergent, some slight Asrian in later chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-03-29 11:50:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 141,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13926570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telanaris/pseuds/telanaris
Summary: “Tell me about it,” Aredhel says, stroking his sternum, the cage of bone that imprisons his heart. “The life we would have had. Will you? I want—I’d like to hear you talk about it.”“Stay with me,” Ilya begs her, “and I will give it to you. Whatever you ask of me. I will learn how to garden; I will sing your flowers tall. When you go to the forest to gather I will run the till at the shop and turn my ears at every chime of the bell at the doors, hoping to greet you.” He leans over her, presses his mouth to her brow, whispers to her. “I will rise with you each morning and stay at your side every night, wherever we are; we can stay here or we can leave, start over elsewhere. I will show you… so many things, I will lay you down in golden fields and—”“And love me?” she asks, delighted.“We will rumple the grain as I make love to you,” he swears, “and the sky will be blue, and when the trade winds pick up we will go elsewhere: I will show you green rivers and the sharpest, tallest of mountains. I will follow wherever you lead me. I will do nothing unless it should please you. I will lay the world at your feet.”





	1. The Patient

Ilya had not seen the magician since _that_ night, in his shop. 

Asra had to be avoiding him—that was the only logical, reasonable explanation. Even when they weren't collaborating, they often ran into each other at the palace as they sought a cure for the plague. They worked beside one another in the same library. They walked the same halls.

Of course, Ilya was not always in the library. His research often took him elsewhere. Still, even on those days when Quaestor Valdemar demanded Ilya's assistance in the laboratory below the castle, he will still run into Asra once or twice, more often than not.

But the cushions that Asra so loved to stretch himself across, languid and beautiful, had gone undisturbed. And no matter how frequently or how late into the night Ilya lingered at his desk in the library, Asra never appeared. The sprawling roots on the great folding doors remained motionless. 

Asra must have been using his witchery to tiptoe around him, Ilya was sure of it. He’d long suspected that the magician had his own private network of “shortcuts” through the palace, portals created so that Asra could travel the grounds freely while avoiding Lucio. Sometimes he would appear as if out of thin air, from a hallway that only moments before had been empty. 

And now, it seemed, Asra was using that network—or some other nefarious trick of his trade—to avoid him.

Well, Ilya wasn't going to stand for that. If he thought he could just…! And then, _avoid_ him, as if nothing had happened… well. Ilya was not going to stand for that. Asra could not hide from him forever.

Especially if Ilya posted up in his home. 

In his defense, he'd had a few drinks at the Raven. In his defense, he had not _intended_ to break into the shop when he had set out with that destination in mind. But after a few minutes of shouting and pounding on his door in vain, well... he'd slipped in through the open window, with only a little more difficulty than he had doing the very same at Mazelinka’s.

It wasn’t _just_ what they had shared, you see. It wasn’t only that Asra had ghosted on him after burying his hands in his hair and pulling so deliciously, and holding him close, desperate breaths and hungry mouths. Intimacies and endearments aside, the next morning, when he inspected the palm of his hand, the flesh had healed completely. There was not a hint of a wound in the place where the knife had cut him open, no blemish nor redness, nor even a scar. Asra had cut deep, but now—impossibly!—it was as though the blade had never touched his skin.

And that—that was very odd indeed, and so, although he was _furious_ (but mostly deeply hurt) that Asra would disappear on him after the night they’d shared, he was also deeply, deeply curious.

( _…What is kind of dark magic is that witch working on, really?_ )

( _What hasn’t he told me?_ ) 

After slipping neatly through the open window, it was fairly obvious Asra wasn't home. The lights in the shop were extinguished, and the house was silent. 

And in the dim quiet, Ilya began to second-guess himself. There was no telling when Asra was coming back. For all he knew, it could be hours—Asra very well might not return until after dawn. (Night-long excursions would certainly explain all of Asra’s daytime catnaps, basking in the sun of the library windows or curled up beneath the willow in the gardens.) Was Ilya really the kind of person to sit in the dark, waiting, coming up with the most clever and dramatic quip to greet Asra with when he—eventually—opened the door?

…Well, he _was_ , but that didn't mean he _should_. 

He heaved a defeated sigh. If the witch was so eager to avoid him (and if the past week was any indication, he was not only eager but quite _skilled_ at doing so) then no matter how long he waited in the dark, he’d probably never catch him. Not, anyway, until he wanted to be caught. 

Ilya heaved a sigh, shoulders slumping. Back, then, through the window—surely the door had some kind of curse on it—

But then, he heard it. 

A sound, upstairs. A low moan—and not Asra’s. (He blushed, even alone as he was in the dark, to realize he could now recognize the sounds of Asra’s pleasure.)

But if it was not Asra….

Ilya’s eyebrows knit thoughtfully. Until now, he had always believed that Asra lived alone. Asra had never bothered to correct that assumption, though he’d certainly had plenty of opportunities to do so. (That information, for example, might have been nice to have when they were here together last—when Ilya was crying his name loud enough to be heard outside on the street, never mind on the floor above.) But there was definitely someone else in the house now and, curious, slippery boy that he was, Ilya could not help himself. 

( _What hasn’t he told me?_ Asra had crafted an aura of mystery about him so thick, Ilya could not resist the chance to peek, if only for a moment, behind that veil.)

When another groan sounded he stepped, quietly as he could, towards the stairs. Climbed them. Tried the door on the landing, and found it unlocked. 

“Asra?” Ilya called his name softly, peering around the door.

It was his bedroom, he realized, decorated in the same haphazard (and vaguely dangerous-looking) style as the shop, baubles and curious instruments hanging on to every available surface. They had never made it to the bedroom that night in the shop, too eager and hungry to leave to the card room in the back. There was a kitchen up here too, crammed in the corner, along with a table and a few cluttered bookshelves. Piles of books radiated out from the shelves like skirts. 

In the corner: a cold hearth, bereft of flame. An open window admitted a cool, evening breeze, smelling of sea and salt.

But Asra was not here.

Instead, stretched on the bed in the corner of the room, was a woman, sickly pale. She turned to the sound of his voice, her eyelids fluttering fitfully as she drew herself out of some fever dream. Weak, skin damp with sweat, searching for the magician—when she opened her eyes, they were blood red. 

_Oh, Asra. What have you been up to? Is this why you've been so secretive?_

...Not that Ilya was in a position to judge, really. He had secrets of his own. The woman before him, at least, seemed to be kept in relative comfort, no matter what dark arts Asra may have been working upon her. Still, comfortable or not, one glance was all Ilya needed to know that she was deeper in the throes of the plague than even Lucio. 

Which made what happened next _deeply_ surprising.

Her eyes widened—and then, almost instantly, she had swung her legs over the side of the bed, and leapt to her feet.

The sheer _force_ of the magic she directed at him was so powerful that, had he not grabbed the door jamb just in time, he would have tumbled and fell ass backwards right down the stairs. 

“I’m not going!” she shouted, dropping into a defensive stance, bending her knees. “You’ll have to kill me first if you want to cart me off to that awful place!”

“Whoa, now, just _hold on a minute_ —”

Ilya raised his arms in surrender but that didn't stop her; he had to crouch as he dodged another wave of magic, this one aimed directly at his head. When it met the wood behind him, it bubbled and hissed ominously, leaving the surface charred and black. 

Before he had time to recover the woman had snatched a glass phial off her bedside table. 

“ _Fuck you, you goddamned charlatan!_ By the time I’m done with you, you'll need a _real_ doctor, instead of some glorified body-counter!”

The phial flew out of her hand, hurtling across the room before Ilya had a chance to react.

It smashed against his forehead with the delicate, snowflake sound of shattering glass. He could feel the warm, delicious tickle as blood from the wound slipped down his face, along his jaw. Something else fell, too, meeting the ground with a moist _thump,_ before beginning to slither away. Ilya had to blink twice before he believed what he was seeing.

“Did you just throw a _leech_ at me?”

“And there's more where that came from!” she shouted, reaching for a hefty looking leather-bound book and winding her arm back. “I am _not_ going to the Lazaret! I’d rather _die_ —”

But then her breath came in a rasping rattle, followed by a dry, barking cough; soon it had developed into a small fit, knocking the wind out of her, doubling her over. Blood stained the worn wood floor between her feet. Bent over, heaving, struggling to breathe… the tome she had raised to defend herself with slipped from her fingers and met the floor with a bang.

Once more, Ilya couldn't help himself—he really had an abysmal sense of self-control. Perhaps he was not a ‘real’ doctor, as she had said, but he had been called to this vocation because he wanted to _help_ people. 

He took a few steps closer to her. 

But she heard his approach, and raised her head enough to shoot him a fierce warning glance. A thin rivulet of blood trickled from her mouth down her chin. 

“Stay back—get any closer, and the next time I hex you, I won’t miss.”

Ilya waved his gloved hands emphatically. “I'm not—there’s been a misunderstanding,” he said, ceasing his advance. “I _am_ a doctor, but I’m not here to take you to the Lazaret.” 

 _Though I probably should._  

He widened his arms, holding his hands with his palms facing the ceiling in surrender, supplication. “Honestly, I didn't even know you were up here.”

She looked at him, warily, eyes narrowing. But she must have believed him—enough to lower her guard a little—because she lowered herself, gingerly back onto the bed behind her, sighing in relief when the mattress sank beneath her weight, holding her. For a moment, her face showed her fatigue—pain and weariness painted plain as day across her features—but then she wrestled back control of herself, looking up at Ilya suspiciously.

“If you are not here for me, then what in the names of the Gods are you doing in my shop?”

Ilya felt his cheeks color at those words. _Her shop?_ “I, uh, I thought this was… I was looking for Asra. The magician.”

“Well, as you can see, he’s not here,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed upon him. As she did, she lifted her sleeve to her mouth to wipe away the blood, but only succeeded in smearing it across her cheek. 

Then her brow furrowed.“How did you even get in? There's wards enough on the door to hold back an army.”

“I…” Ilya began, racking his brain, trying to figure out a way _not_ to confess he'd sort of broken in to her—Asra’s?—home. He’d certainly gotten himself out of stickier situations before.

But then again, whoever this was (Asra’s… roommate? _Something more_?) it was probably better to be honest with her. He didn’t want to provoke another assault—she was resting now, but Ilya didn't doubt she had some fight left in her.

“I came through in the window.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “A man of your size? That, I would have liked to have seen.”

A moment longer she looked at him, and Ilya could not help but blush deeper under her gaze. It was searching, and intense; he had the strange sense that he was being _measured_ , somehow, by some invisible metric. (Stranger still, though he knew so little about her, he wanted to be found satisfactory.) 

Without a word, the woman eased herself back onto her feet, stretching her arms over her head as she walked over to the kitchen.

“Well, since you were so _enterprising_ in your entry, it would be very inhospitable of me to kick you out.” She raised her hand to the hearth and ignited the wood with a gesture; soon, a cheery flame was crackling within its walls. She set a kettle to boil above it, then reached for the cupboards.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked him over her shoulder, gesturing to the table for him to sit. “Tea? Coffee?”

Poor Ilya had no idea what to do with himself. Only a moment ago this woman had been attacking him, and now she was offering him conversation and warm drink, and he _almost certainly should not be here,_ rooting around in Asra’s personal life, but by now, it seemed almost ruder _not_ to stay. And she still seemed at least a little suspicious of him. If he tried to leave… well, he wasn’t sure she’d _let_ him leave, until she was satisfied he wasn’t going to return with enough backup to wrestle her to the Lazaret against her wishes.

So… sure. If he was going to stay, he’d welcome a strong, black cup.

“Uhh, coffee, yes, if you have it.” He pulled off his overcoat, folding it over the back of one of the wooden chairs before he sat down. “Forgive me. I didn't realize—Asra didn't say anything about having a roommate.”

Her back was turned to him, so he could not read her expression, but he plainly heard her snort, both derisive and amused. “Roommate. Sure, why not.” She took a clean rag from one of the drawers and wet it, squeezing the excess moisture into the sink. “You’re a plague doctor. Shouldn’t surprise you much that he’s keeping me a secret. If I go to quarantine, to the Lazaret, I’m not coming back. Neither of us want that.”

She had turned back to him and crossed the room, and now stood before him, damp rag in hand. “Tilt your head up?” she asked, but hardly gave him the time to do so before her fingers had curled around his chin, tilting his head to face her. 

( _He really, probably, should_ not _have let her touch him—_ )

She brought the damp rag to his forehead, gently beginning to wipe away the blood from his face. 

“I’m Aredhel, by the way,” she offered, her eyes briefly meeting his and favoring him with a kind smile before turning her attention back to cleaning his wound.

“Here, let me,” he said, gently prying the rag from her fingers and dabbing, gently, at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes widened in surprise but then she stood, perfectly still, as he finished cleaning her face.

“I’m Ilya.”

“Ahhhh,” she said, drawing out the vowel. "You're _Ilya_. I might have known. Now I understand why you were breaking into my home in the middle of the night.”

Just then, the kettle began to sing; Aredhel stood, taking her damp rag with her, to remove the kettle from the hearth.

“Wh-why?” Ilya stammered. “What has he said about me?” _What kind of impression has he given you to warrant that kind of response?_

She was busying herself with the kettle and the cups; she did not turn around to respond. “Don’t flatter yourself—he hasn't said much. Only that you’ve been working together at the palace.” Ilya could not see her face, but by the sound of her voice—all secretive and amused—she _knew_. She'd probably heard him up here that very night, moaning like a bitch in heat one floor below. 

“So how goes it?” she asked, pulling him out of his fit of embarrassment as she joined him once more at the table, setting a steaming mug of coffee in front of him before lowering herself into her seat. “Your search for a cure.”

It was a loaded question, though she knew it not. Because of his medical background, he was working under the Quaestor, and his experience was... very different, he suspected, than the one Asra was having at the palace. Whatever Asra's progress may be, they have not had a breakthrough in the laboratory in weeks, and the failure has turned the Quaestor to acts of greater cruelty and experiments of higher risk. And Ilya was complicit in all of this. 

(He felt it, then, like lead in his stomach—he has not come here chasing Asra's kisses, or his touch, but an answer to a question.  _What have you been up to_? As if the simple vanishing act of the wound on his palm could be the key. It is not affection he has come looking for, but a path, a way to help the sick and the dying that does not involve inflicting further suffering upon them in the name of 'science.')

But he can tell her none of this. Instead he sighs, scowls. “It's... it isn’t going _well._ ”

Aredhel chuckled into her mug. "Well, that is disheartening, but I can't say I'm surprised."

She wrapped her hands around her mug, took a sip and sighed contentedly. It was enough to remind Ilya of the cup she’d set before him: steaming and black. Politely, Ilya lifted it to his lips, took a sip.

And the coffee was… oh, more marvelous than he’d expected. A _revelation_ , really—rich with a melody of flavors, all layered above the roasted flavor of the beans. One greedy sip turned to two; he only set the cup down when he realized he was endanger of burning his tongue.

“Everything alright?” she asked, raising an eyebrow as the cup met the table, forceful enough to clatter.

“Alright? It’s… it’s lovely. Spectacular,” Ilya told her. “It isn’t just coffee though, is it? It’s… there’s something toasted about it, _spicy…_ ”

Aredhel beamed at the praise, leaning back in her chair, smiling widely. “That’s the cinnamon, probably. But there’s a few other additions, too. I worked very hard on coming up with the blend. Thank you for saying so—I am glad you like it.”

“And what have you got, there, then?” Ilya asked, planting his elbow on the table as he leaned towards her, peering at the steaming pink liquid in her cup. “Something equally delicious?”

“Regrettably, no,” Aredhel replied, glancing into her cup with a raised eyebrow. “This is medicine.”

“Medicine?” Ilya repeated, perking up noticeably. “What sort? Is it for the plague? Something you came up with yourself?” Before he knew it he was practically crawling over the table top, threatening to upset it as he tried to catch a glimpse, or a whiff, of what was in her mug. 

“Don’t get too excited,” she warned, but she was smiling, again; pleased, it seemed, to have someone who appreciated her work. (She had gone so long without an audience, banished from the shop by her sickness, no longer allowed to devise tinctures and teas for the customers who relied on her.) “It isn’t a cure. But I’ve devised, at least, a couple of ways to manage the symptoms.”

She turned in her chair, pulling down the collar of her shirt. There, beneath the short, clipped blond hairs at the nape of her neck, was a sigil not unlike the one Asra had drawn on the table. It was glowing, the lines lit up with a faint ethereal blue.

“This ward keeps the contagion localized,” she said, before turning around to face him. “I can’t… I can’t have Asra getting sick, because of me. It is… exhausting, keeping the ward up, but necessary, if I am to stay here. But _this,_ ” she said, wrapping her hand around the handle of the mug, lifting it to her face as she grimaced, “is for those awful _boils._ ”

Really, Ilya should have been relieved—elated, even—to hear she’d found a way to make herself less contagious. But he was far more intrigued by the tea. As far as Ilya knew, the boils (or blisters) on the skin only appeared in the very late stages of the plague—there were almost the surest sign the sick person was close to death. Even Lucio hadn’t yet reached that stage of the plague. If she had them—if she’d had them long enough to figure out how to _treat_ them—she really should be dead.

As covertly as he could, Ilya searched her. His eyes roamed across her body, the exposed skin of her arms, her neck. But his curiosity did not go unnoticed. When he met her eyes, she was watching him, smiling proudly.

“I don’t see any boils,” he offered, meekly.

“That’s because it _works_ ,” she replied. “Come here,” she said, beckoning him closer.

Ilya rose out of his seat, abandoning his coffee on the table; as he knelt at her side, she was raising her shirt, exposing a pale crescent of flesh at her waist. And—yes—as he came closer, he could see the telltale rash on her midriff where a boil had once been. But the flesh was _healing._ There was no indication the blister had ruptured, as they usually did at this stage.

He looked up at her in wonder; she was beaming at him, effervescent with pride. “Go on,” she said, answering the question that was written across his face. “You can touch it.”

Ilya could hardly help himself, gloved fingers against her flesh at once, stretching, _probing._ “It’s… unusual, to say the least, for someone to have only one. Usually the sick will get a whole rash of them at once. How did—what happened?”

She scowled. “Hubris happened. Thought that I was out of the woods because they boils receded and cleared, so I scaled back my intake, but I think I had the dosage wrong.”

“What’s in it?”

“Rosehips. Powdered snow root. A little other hocus pocus.”

“Can you make more of it?” Ilya asked, looking up at her, his fingers still gently brushing her stomach. “It won’t cure anyone, but it would greatly ease the suffering of others.”

She frowned, averted her eyes. Pride gave way to guilt; she leaned back in her chair, fingers fretting nervously. 

“Honestly, Ilya? I’m not sure how much I have left for myself. The snow root is difficult to come by—I’m sure you know some of its more, ah, _recreational_ uses—and it isn’t taking in our garden. I don’t know how I’m going to get anymore myself.”

Ah, but Ilya knew. Knew where to find illicit things, how to buy treatments too extreme to be found in the street vendors stalls. The Quaestor sent him to the Red Market so frequently that more than half the vendors knew him on sight.

“I could get it,” he said, fingers pressing almost eagerly into her side. “I _will_ get it. I’ll bring you more of it—as much as you need—if you’ll teach me how to make it. And your other remedies… you’ve already gotten much farther than I have, even if you’re only managing the symptoms.”

She tilted her head to the side, favoring him with a smile. Then she bit her lip, thoughtfully, before nodding her head towards him in acquiescence.

“Sure. Yes. I’d like that, I think; helping you.”

Ilya _beamed_ , the grin that split his face brilliant enough to rival the crescent moon. He leaned back on his heels, lowering her shirt over her healing blister and setting his gloved hand, gently, upon her knee. 

“Coffee, curatives. You are a _wonder_ , aren't you, Aredhel?” Ilya said, his voice soft with awe, fingertips smoothing circles over her skirt. “How unfathomably cruel of Asra, to be hiding you from me all this time.”

There was a color creeping across her cheeks, pinking the wan skin. Flushed like this, it was easy to imagine what she would look like healthy: a vision. She tilted her head to the side, favoring him with an inquisitive glance, tone a mixture of amusement and coquettishness.

“Are you always this flirtatious with your patients, Ilya?”

“No,” Ilya replied, “certainly not with the Count, if that’s what your asking.” The corners of his mouth curled, before his eyes fell to her lap; his fingers were still tracing idly spirals on her kneecap. 

This was… ill-advised. Even his presence here was probably enough to endanger her, what with how closely Lucio and Valdemar watched his comings and goings.  _He should not be here._ But how could he resist? Was it fair to expect him to walk out into the night, and not spare another thought or backwards glance to the shop that hid this miracle? And, true, Asra had every right to his secrets. True too that Ilya should not have come here, uninvited. But at first blush it seemed clear Aredhel was having better luck managing the plague than anyone at the palace, and Asra did _not_ have the right to keep her success to himself, not when it could help so many other people. 

And she was…. He swallowed. _Something._ He stilled his fingers, covering her knee with her palm, before he looked up into her face.

“Would you like me to stop?”

She looked at him, measured him with her eyes. Her green rises looking all the greener, swimming as they were in pools of red. And they were _sparkling_. 

“No, I would not like you to stop. I think I would very much like it if you continued.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *This chapter has been updated/edited as of 4/24 to accommodate plot revelations in Book 10.


	2. Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A foolish notion seized him: that he could kiss her now, and she would not stop him. And she looked so perfectly, astoundingly kissable, even with her eyes stained red with sickness.

It had been a week since he’d last seen her—and already, that was too long.

He’d set out at once, as soon as his feet crossed the palace gates. The sun was setting, and the streets were quiet: a faint mist of rain made the cobblestones gleam in the darkness, setting his path all a-shimmer and beckoning him towards the shop’s entrance.

Towards her.

He could not help the impatience of his step, the merry bounce in his gait as he crossed the city, closing the space between them. (Too far, he had been _too far_ —) What had she gotten up to, that minx, in the week he’d been gone? What medicinal herbs had been crushed, boiled, mixed into teas in tonics? What secret knowledge might she have uncovered in the books he had left her with, so liberally “borrowed” from the palace library?

(He did not allow himself the space to wonder how much her illness had progressed in his absence: too dark, those thoughts, and they’d followed him all week. Now that he was back in the city proper, he refused to entertain the notion that he might find her as bedridden and weak as the pour souls he’d been treating in Valdemar's laboratory.)

When he finally arrived at the shop, night had fallen. The windows were dark, the lantern extinguished, but two tall candles were burning in the window of the second floor. Her sign, to him, that Asra was not home. His heart thrilled at the sight. He had half expected to arrive at the shop only to have to turn around and leave, come back another evening. Instead, he pulled the door key out of his pocket—he’d been holding it, fingers rubbing over the metal anxiously the whole way here.

_“May I have that?” she’d asked, but did not wait for an answer before reaching across the table and plucking one of the bright, silver buttons off of his uniform. By then it was no use protesting—the thread already severed—so he had only watched her, bright and curious, as she cupped the button between her hands, passing one palm over it slowly, a look of concentration on her face. When her hands parted, in place of the button was a key, fashioned out of the button metal._

_She held her palm open, extending it across the table for him to take the key._

_“So that way you won’t have to crawl in through the window next time,” she’d said with a sly grin. “Next time, the sills will be hexed.”_

He’d strung the key around a piece of twine and worn it around his neck, hidden beneath the fabric of his shirt. It was a reminder, the weight of a promise he’d made on the night he’d seen her last: 

_“I will come back to you, healthy and whole.”_

(He had told her, then, that he was going to the Lazaret for a week; a small lie. Quaestor Valdemar had returned from a trip abroad, swelled up no doubt with new ideas for experiments and 'treatments'; he had known, when he had seen her last, that he would not be able to get away. But she did not know, he could not tell her, what he would really be occupied with. So he had told her he would be in residence at the Lazaret, and though it was a lie, it was a small one: still, he spent the week surrounded by the sick and the dead.)

The lock of the door yielded at the touch of the key; bells tinkled overhead as he crossed the threshold, announcing his presence.

Immediately he heard the patter of bare feet on the stairs, the wood groaning as someone hurried over it. Ilya turned his eyes to the stairs just in time to see Aredhel rushing down them, searching in the darkness for her visitor. 

At first, Ilya thought maybe she'd been expecting Asra (that would certainly explain her eagerness) but when she saw him—when her eyes fell upon him and recognized his features in the dark—she smiled with such radiance, such _joy_ that it was difficult to believe, for a minute, that she was even sick. And when that smile lit up her face he knew it was just him, only him that she’d been hoping for when she’d heard the door.

When she spoke, her tone was breathless with relief:

“Oh, all thanks and praise, you’re _back_.”

She rushed across the shop to greet him, taking it in only a few strides. She seized his jacket, dragging him back towards the stairwell, into the light spilling down from the second floor. She stepped onto the first stair and placed her hands flat on either side of his face, tilting it this way and that as she searched her eyes for any sign of redness. Still unsatsified, her fingers found his jaw and pulled his mouth open so she could check for any sores or bleeding in his mouth.

“Aredhel,” Ilya said, laughing good-naturedly, easing her hands off his jaw, “easy, ’Red, it’s okay. I’m _fine_ , dear. Fit as a fiddle, right as rain.”

“I know,” she said, looking at him apologetically. “I know, but I was so worried about you, Ilya.” Her voice softened to a murmur. “You have no idea how hard it was, letting you walk out of that door last time, knowing where you were going next.”

Stupid, it was stupid, how that made him feel. So warm and _good_ , to have his arrival met with welcome. He was sorry that she had worried after him, but he couldn’t help but feel so touched by it: she cared for him. Ilya didn’t really know whether she missed him specifically, or because she felt so isolated and alone here that she would have greeted any visitor with the same enthusiasm. But that uncertainty did not in any way diminish how good it felt, to see her again. To see how _happy_ it made her to see him.

“Well, I was never worried, dear,” Ilya replied, all bravado, pressing a chivalrous kiss to the back of her hand before releasing it. “I trusted your magicks would keep me safe.”

She’d sent him on his way with various complicated tinctures and talismans, _drink this twice a day, wear this as protection._ She’d barred the door with her body, blocking his exit until he promised her he would not be reckless, that he would be careful. 

_“Promise to return to me, healthy and whole.”_

They’d only known each other a short while; tonight was only his fifth visit. Too soon for Ilya to feel the way he did, such sentiment and yearning. When he’d left last, he had passed one look over his shoulder: she had been watching him from the window as he left, and she had looked so anxious and frightened for him that it had nearly broken his heart.

(Shouldn’t have felt that way. Wasn’t like that, he knew. They were just friends. He shouldn’t expect or ask for more—it was that kind of pushing that had ruined his relationship with Asra, and he desperately did not want to repeat that mistake.)

(Though he knew in the back of his mind that it was already too late for that: a spring in his step as soon as he started crossing the city towards her. Always it was like this. It mattered not how tired he was from long hours spent researching, nor how the tortured screams of those poor souls in the laboratory still echo in his mind long after he has left the dungeon. With her he can believe, for a while, that he is a decent man. She has shown him a practice of healing that relies not on cruelty and bleedings, not on experiments so dark they must only be performed in secret. Through her, he sees a way to be better: a glimpse of a life he might yet earn.)

“Well, I’m glad your finally back,” she said, relaxing, seemingly satisfied that Ilya was in as fine health as he’d claimed. “I had a feeling—I’d hoped you were coming by tonight. I set the kettle.”

 

 

 

Ten minutes later and Ilya was already on his second cup of coffee. It had been a long, tiring week, and he needed the caffeine as much as he had craved the taste of her particularly spiced brew.

The kitchen table was strewn with diagrams and drawings, notes scrawled in Ilya’s illegible hand, and several of the books Ilya had “borrowed” from the palace library, opened to passages Aredhel had wanted to share with him. But for the moment, they were focusing on the drawings he’d brought back with him (although ‘drawings’ was a bit of a generous description) from the dissections he’d observed that past week. 

(Quaestor Valdemar would probably kill him if he found out Ilya had left the palace with them—evidence of their secret work—but Ilya doubted that Valdemar would notice their absence.)

“And these are… they’re brains?” Aredhel asked, smoothing her fingers over one of the thin pieces of parchment, her fingers following the uneasy lines of his drawing. “That’s what my brain looks like?”

“No,” Ilya said, “It would be _tragic_ if that’s what you brain looked like.” He’d been drawing all week but it hadn’t improved his draftsmanship in the slightest. The drawing was a useful depiction, but it was nowhere close to what the real thing looked like—more of a diagram in essence than an accurate representation. “Don’t let these beautiful hands fool you, Aredhel; I may be skilled at surgery, but I’m miserable at drawing. But they’re still useful. Here, look, if we compare them side by side….”

He began shuffling papers around on the table's surface, parchment crinkling against itself, before his hands found the drawings he was looking for and placed them beside one another in front of Aredhel.

“So _that_ ,” he said, pointing to one of the drawings, “is my pathetic, though instructive, rendering of a healthy brain. And these,” he said, gesturing to drawings that covered the rest of the table, “are drawings of the brains of plague victims. So, you tell me,” he said, planting his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his hands. “What’s different about them?”

She hummed, thoughtfully, brought her fingers to her face; her middle finger smoothed across her bottom lip, a gesture he knew by now to be thoughtful habit, as she studied his drawings.

“This part,” she said, circling her finger around the front part of the brain. “It’s… larger, I think? In the plague victims.”

“Very good!” Ilya congratulated, beaming at her with pride.

“So what does that mean?” she asked, tilting her head to as she met his gaze.

Ilya threw up his hands. “Oh, I haven’t the faintest idea.”

Aredhel laughed, light and low. 

“So you’ve cut all these dead people up for no reason?”

“No, no, not _no_ reason,” Ilya insisted, shaking his head. “What do you take me for, some kind of monster? No.”

_No. I will not be that._

He scooted his chair closer to hers, coming around the table so he could point at the drawings’ details. He could barely keep the excitement out of his voice. 

“The fact that its only happening to people who die of plague means, most likely, that the plague is causing it. The brain bleeds, it swells, its a kind of hemorrhage. It also explains why the eyes get that red color—damage to the brain, seeping through the… the skull.” 

His voice faltered. Out of the corner of his eye, he looked at her, guiltily, meeting her red-stained eyes with his own. He probably should not have sounded so pleased to tell her that particular symptom was because her brain was literally tearing itself apart under the influence of the plague. 

She was always so _alive_ when he visited, so giddy and enthusiastic that it was too easy to forget, sometimes, that she, too, was dying.

But if his words had bothered her, or disturbed her in some way, it didn’t show. She reached for another one of his drawings, pulling it across the tabletop for a closer look. “But why is it only _that_ part?” she asked him, brow furrowed. “What makes that part special?”

“Well, we don’t know. But what we think we know—what all the books in that ivory tower seem to indicate—is that this part, the part that sits over the eyes, is the part of the brain concerned with imagination,” he said, looking at her slyly. “With dreams.”

“Dreams?” Aredhel repeated, turning to look at him excitedly. “Are you sure?”

“Yep,” he replied, nodding for emphasis. “Dreams, the psyche, consciousness. All of that activity seems to happen in the part that’s being damaged.”

“So I was right!” she declared, triumphantly, leaning back in her seat. “I mean, aren’t I? That isn’t how most illnesses work. There’s something else about the plague, this plague; something weird and otherworldly…. It would certainly explain why it’s been affecting Malak.”

“Malak?” Ilya asked.

“My familiar,” she said. “He’s… there’s no reason for him to be affected by the plague the way he is, if it is only a bodily sickness. He’s weak, and unsteady; half the time he doesn’t even have the energy left to fly. But if the plague is something else, something arcane in nature….”

There was pain in her voice. He’d never heard her complain of the way the plague affected her, the ache it must have set in her bones and behind her eyes, but when she spoke of her familiar, she was deeply grieved. And though Ilya knew nothing of that—magic, and familiars—he knew Asra kept Faust close. Even if you couldn’t see the snake, there was a good chance she was curled around Asra’s arm, or coiled in his pockets. 

He asked, “Where is he now? Your familiar.”

Aredhel looked at him, mouth open in response, but then she hesitated. Strange—she’d never withheld anything from him before, or if she had it had never shown so clearly on her face.

“I let him out for the night,” she said, too cheerily to convince him. “So he has a chance to stretch his wings. He’ll be back before dawn.” Then she plopped herself back into her table, planted her hands on the surface with an audible smack.

“So. What do we do now, Doctor Devorak?” And the change of subject was abrupt, but clearly final; though Ilya wanted to press, her eyes were shining with the triumph of their recent discovery. 

And as usual, he found it difficult to say no to her. 

“Now,” he said, reaching over the table to drag the two “borrowed” tomes across its surface, “we hit the books.”

 

 

 

Unfortunately, after the week Ilya had—Valdemar ordering him around, on his feet all day administering injections, surrounded by death (and _missing her)_ and  helpless to do anything to prevent it—the texts barely held his attention.

At some point, they’d moved from the table to the bed. Probably not wise—proximity was one thing, sitting on the mattress where she spent most of her illness was quite another entirely—but after having visited her so often, he couldn’t help but be more comfortable. Her wards must have been working. If he hadn’t caught the plague from her yet, he doubted he was going to do so now. 

And anyway, the bed was soft, and much more comfortable at the end of the day.

They were sitting side by side with their backs to the wall, books open in their lap as they read. Though “read” might be too strong a word. Ilya’s eyes had glazed over the same sentence three times already; hadn’t turned a page in five minutes. 

He sighed, bringing his hands to his eyes, rubbing them as if that would be enough to banish the sleep that so dearly wished to claim him.

“Hey,” soft-spoken to him in the darkness behind his eyelids, the only warning he had before she reached out and placed her hand, gently, on his shoulder. “You alright? Do you need to take a break?”

“Oh, no, no,” Ilya lied, pulling his hands from his eyes to meet her gaze. How endearing—she looked so concerned. “I’m excellent,” he added, in an attempt to convince her. “I’m just resting my eyes.”

By the look she was giving him she didn’t buy it, eyebrow arched in suspicion, a wry smile on her lips. She saw right through him. Though it probably wasn’t hard: Ilya knew he wore his weariness on his face, exhaustion clear in the purple bags beneath his eyes.

“Would you like me to read to you?” she asked, her hand giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “So you could rest your eyes and listen.”

Ilya looked at her in wonder. “Oh, would you? You’re an absolute angel. Yes, thank you, that would be grand.”

“Here,” she offered, and scooted further along the wall, town towards the head of the bed, making room for him to recline. But when she patted her thigh, gesturing for him to lie down and rest his head in her lap, Ilya stiffened.

Something trembled inside of him, a low quivering, the hum of a temptation he should _not_ answer. They had touched before, certainly. Perhaps, after their relationship had begun with a physical assault, it was only natural. That night she had cleaned the blood from his face; she had lifted her shirt and offered the healing skin of her stomach for his study. It had set a certain tone. 

But this… this was something different. This felt like a line being crossed.

_She would never allow me that close to her if she knew...._

He must have hesitated too long, because Aredhel’s expression turned anxious, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m sorry, is that—is that too close? Are you worried about getting sick?”

“No!” Ilya exclaimed, perhaps too quickly, too eagerly. “No, I…” 

But he did not want to speak too soon, before he’d wrangled his tongue. The speech that would come pouring out of him, too vulnerable, too _needy_ ….

_I can’t help but feel uncertain. Beside you, in this bed, and it isn’t—I know, I know, it isn’t that. Isn’t like that with us, at least not for you. But I am afraid that if I am allowed to feel the softness of your thigh beneath my head I will like it much too much. It will be unbecoming of me, ungentlemanly. Sometimes I look at you and I see fantasies, dreams of futures I should not be permitted, should not indulge. And if I allow myself to rest this way, cozy and comfortable with you in a bed you share with another, it may start to feel too much like this is something else, something that it is most certainly not—_

But he could not hold back both that flood of words and his desire at once.

“Are you sure?” he asked, meekly.

Her face brightened. “Yes, silly. Otherwise I wouldn’t have offered. Come on, stretch out; you’ve had a long week.”

“Alright,” he answered, favoring her with an uncertain smile. “Okay.” 

And how unfair it was, really; she was deep in the sickness, beplagued, bedridden half the time. But instead of the foul odors that cloyed the air in the Lazaret, when his head met the fabric of her skirts they smelled faintly of lavender, clean and soothing and altogether far too appealing a place to lay down his head. She glanced at him to be sure he was settled, before moving her eyes back to the text.

“‘It is therefore imperative that the movements of the psyche should be kept in balance, and no other medical regimen should be given precedence over it. The balancing of the consciousness is crucial to the protection against and overstimulated imagination…’ oh, what rubbish… ‘so that the torment of ideas too vivid will not lead to undesired consequences and symptoms manifesting in the body…’”

 

 

 

Perhaps it was the week he had—the energy he’d spent rushing from the docks right to her doorstep—or the soothing scent of the lavender in her clothes, but she had hardly begun to read before Ilya promptly fell asleep.

“Ahh, here we go: ‘For surely the mind is so powerful an instrument, that it must come as no shock to those in the medical profession that any malignant influence upon it can upset the healthiness of any other bodily organ. If a bone is broken, it may rend flesh or split skin, but the wound will be localized to that area; if the mind is unwell, it can have disastrous consequences across all aspects of bodily function.’ I’m not sure that’s helpful, though; it’s not really saying anything we don’t already know, is it? What do you think, Ilya?”

“…Ilya?”

But no response was forthcoming: he was fast asleep, eyes closed, chest rising and falling gently with each slow breath. 

Aredhel smiled to herself, moving the ribbon that marked his place in the tome and setting it aside. No use in reading without him. She was a healer of sorts, it was true, but most of her ingenuity in that realm came from familiarity with ingredients and their properties, how to best extract the power out of them. Without Ilya helping her she could hardly make heads or tails of the books on her own, knowing only enough to help point something out that he might have found of interest.

Probably, she shout have kicked him out, then. Dragged his tired ass out of her bed and sent him on his way home. And she would—she would. 

But at least for a minute, all she wanted to do was look at him. 

He did not measure up to the way Asra had described him, that was for sure. Or perhaps he was exactly as Asra said he was, just as silly and flirtatious and eager, and it was only that this kind of company was precisely what she desired. She enjoyed having Ilya around. It was good to have someone to talk to who, unlike Asra, did not look upon her with pity and despair, but with wonder.

It had been months, really, since she’d spoken to anyone besides Asra and Faust. She hardly even had Malak. Before tonight, she had banished her own familiar, long gone so frail and patchy and pitiful after Aredhel had contracted the plague that all she could do was seal the poor creature away in a dream and hope his sleep was untroubled. 

She had only woken Malak tonight for something she probably shouldn't have. A small task, and one he was more than capable of performing. But the fact that she had asked him at all betrayed a depth of feeling, a complicated mix of emotions she would rather not untangle (or even, really, acknowledge.)

Ohh, but here it was, now, bubbling up unwanted as Aredhel watched Ilya sleep. He looked so peaceful like this, wrapped up in a slumber that looked so blissful and complete it must have been dreamless, the kind of soft oblivion that comes only with exhaustion. Watching him she felt… too tenderly.

She’d _missed_ him, when he’d gone to the Lazaret. She’d practically been crawling out of her skin while he was gone, her anxiety knotted in the pit of her stomach, swelling with each passing night that he did not return to her.

She had risen each morning only to run her hands over the magical artifacts that lined the room, whispering invocations that were probably powerless to help him, far away as he was, across the lagoon. He’d joked, before he left, that if he’d fallen ill he could hide up here with her, that he would never have to leave. _Don’t joke about that_ , she’d said, her expression sour. In only the short time she’d known him, she already feared Ilya falling ill with the same terror she thought of Asra doing the same.

But it was not good, she thought, to make those feelings too apparent. Ilya was already a little smitten with her, that much was plain. Asra had said that about him, too: that he fell too hard and too fast, too free with his love. As Asra had put it, ' _too clumsy with his heart._ ' The truth in that had been obvious as soon as she’d met Ilya. He’d come here looking for Asra, and she knew why. Knew more than she let on about what had happened between them. And she could tell how lonely he was here, overworked and underloved. Not, anyway, loved as fully as he should be—as fully as she knew with certainty (even after such a short time) that he deserved. And still heartbroken, a little, she suspected, over how quickly Asra had spurned him. 

But she had vowed not to take advantage of it. Fond as she may grow of him, she was determined not to reciprocate his feelings. She would not encourage it.

…and yet here he was, fast asleep, his head in her lap.

_Ahh, fuck._

This was selfish. She was being selfish, inconsiderate, pulling this poor unsuspecting boy into her orbit just because she wanted to, because she was lonely. She was not long for this world. She knew it in her bones. She’d been fighting the plague for so long, and there was only so much fight left in her. Death would come for her soon, but she would not resist: she had lived a good life, and she would greet its ending with dignity.

So it would not do, really, to get too attached now. Ilya would only be one more thing she’d be loathe to leave behind.

And it was better, anyway, was it? To be so close to the end. It made things uncomplicated: no matter how she felt for him, she’d be gone by the next moon. Two moons, tops. And so she would never really know what this could have been, this bright thing between them. Would never have to figure out how to explain it to Asra, how her relationship with Ilya fell into their on-again-off-again, open-yet-complicated thing. Asra would only be hurt by it.

Still she could not stop herself from reaching for him, letting her hand just brush the crown of Ilya’s head, his auburn curls. Dared even to slip her fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp, running her fingers through his ringlets. Even in his sleep, Ilya released a sigh of contentment; his head leaned into her touch, seeking more of it.

She placed her hand on the side of his face, fingers gliding along his cheekbones, her thumb smoothing over his temples. In reply, he hummed in pleasure.

Then, his eyes fluttered open. 

 

 

 

"Oh."

A soft sound of surprise—Ilya couldn't help it. He had not realized he'd dozed off. But more surprising than waking was waking to find her, looking at him the way she was, with her hand smoothing through his hair, caressing his brow. 

She seemed startled to see him awake, caught in the act of this unexpected (though not unwelcome) tenderness. Her lips parted as if she were going to speak, but no words came. Her hands had stilled their ministrations but she had not removed them, still cradling his head gently in her lap. 

A foolish notion seized him: that he could kiss her now, and she would not stop him. And she looked so perfectly, astoundingly kissable, even with her eyes stained red with sickness. He'd always thought that was strange: he'd once caught Consul Valerius sneaking into Lucio's bedchamber through a hidden panel in the wall at a time of night that could only suggest one purpose for his visit, and although he'd found the entire episode hilarious (even though he'd nearly been struck on the head with whatever object Lucio had in arms reach at the time as the Count evicted him from his chambers) he'd been repulsed by the idea that anyone would lie with a plague victim when contagion was a very real concern. 

Now, perhaps, he understood. Even with the possibility of infection (though really, lying in her bed as he was, would one kiss make his odds any worse?) it was very difficult not to reach for her, to wind his fingers into the short blond hairs on her head and take her mouth in his. 

And while all this was passing through his mind, she was only watching him, lips still tantalizingly parted, a color rising in her cheeks. She did not pull away, even now. It was almost as though she were daring him, or waiting for him to move first. And oh, how he wanted to, even though it would be foolish and unwise and herald some fresh emotional disaster for him at a time when he could hardly afford more heartbreak. 

Even if she returned his affection, against all impossible odds and despite the strange circumstance (another lover) that had brought them together, she was ill—she might yet die. Even the thinking of the possibility nearly overwhelmed him with grief. And then there was Asra, the "roommate," and the specific nature of his relationship with Aredhel which had not yet been disclosed to him—and the bold and ugly lies he continued to tell her about the true nature of his work at the palace—

“Malak!”

The moment passes: a shadow flies in through the open window and wheels around the room, pulling Aredhel’s attention away from him. It’s a bird, he realizes; a raven, maybe, but it’s the saddest, mangiest looking thing he’s ever seen. Aredhel flings out her arm in welcome and the bird descends to perch, nibbling at her fingers affectionately before emitting a weak croak.

“No,” she said, her voice laden with dread. “Are you sure? Just around the block?”

The bird tilted its head and looked at her sagely (almost scoldingly, Ilya thought) and something unspoken must pass between them in that glance alone, because in the next moment Aredhel is heaving him out of her lap, leaping out of bed and across the room.

“You should go. Oh, fuck, _fuck_ , motherfucking cocksucker—”

“What—now?” Ilya asked, incredulous, rolling himself out of bed. “What’s going on? Is that your familiar?”

“Yes, that’s Malak,” Aredhel said, her words hurried as she hastily gathered his drawings into a stack on the table, clearing the space. “He’s just informed me that Asra’s coming home. Much earlier than expected, I should add; I thought he’d be gone all night.”

Her expression had changed so quickly, from that inexplicable gaze ( _of yearning?_ ) into something hot and… ashamed, and now he knew why. _Asra’s coming home._ He was glad he no longer had to suffer that look: her back was turned to him. As she rushed about the room, trying to erase all evidence he'd ever been here (coffee dumped out of cups and left in the sink, books slipped back into his bag) Ilya could not help but feel a terrible sinking in his stomach. 

Aredhel rushed to the window, peering into the street before turning back to him. 

“Yes, out the—do you think you can climb down from here?” She worried her lip, and her look was so desperate. “From the window? You're fit, and nimble—I’ve done it a few times, it’s not as bad as it looks—” 

And make no mistake—Ilya was not eager to see Asra himself. Which is why the whole thing really ought not to have been so hurtful. But there was something different about this, the panic on her face. She was not ushering him out through the window to protect his pride. 

She was doing it because she did not want to be caught with him.

She was looking at him encouragingly, hopefully, but behind that veneer he could see her guilt. That it would shame her, if Asra found them together.  

"I thought you said Asra wouldn't mind that we were working together," he said, reaching for his boots, frantically tugging the left one over his knee, up his thigh. 

"No, I said he couldn't stop me," she corrected, her eyes flickering nervously to the door. "And he can't. But he certainly wouldn't like it, and I'd rather not have to explain to him that I've been having you over behind his back."

With a forceful tug, he slid into his second boot; a moment later he'd shrugged on his overcoat and grabbed his bag, joining her at the window. 

And he… wanted to linger, really. Because even the threat of Asra catching them was nothing compared to the confusion he felt at being so swiftly kicked out. 

_What is really going on, here, that you are so ashamed to be caught with me?_

But he was roused from his thoughts by the sound of the door opening, and the bells that accompanied it. Asra’s voice, laced with a kindness and an affection that he’d never used with Ilya, lilted up the stairs.

“Aredhel? Are you still awake?”

Aredhel’s eyes shot to him, wide with panic. She mouthed the word more than spoke it, her lips shaping the letters, anguished, desperate:

“ _Please._ ”

…so he acquiesced. It wouldn’t have been easy to say no to her when she looked like that, so _desperate_ to be rid of him. He did not even wish her good bye before he had propelled his legs out the open window, and began to scurry down the side of the building out onto the street. 

But outside, it was quiet: quiet enough that he could hear Asra open the door to the second floor landing, murmur some affectionate greeting that Aredhel met with an enthusiastic response.

By the time his feet met the cobblestones he had to stop for a minute, leaning his back against the siding. He was trembling, he realized. He gritted his teeth and willed his hands to still… but even when they did, the sensation was replaced by the all-too-familiar feeling of stinging in his eyes. 

_Not here._

He pushed off the wall, his gait hurried as he wandered off into the night, blinking away hot tears of embarrassment.

What a mess he’d made of things. _Again._ What a fool he was. He really should guard his heart more carefully. But at least—at least he hadn’t made an even bigger fool out of himself.

At least he had not given in to the temptation to kiss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to valyrias. who inspired in me this terrible non-canon idea that Malak was MC's familiar and has been protecting Julian ever since because, well. angst.
> 
> *updated 4/24


	3. Temptation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In that instant—upon laying eyes on her, magnificent—he knew that whatever was about to begin on that night would only end badly. And yet he knew just as well, looking at her as she was, that he lacked utterly the will to stop it. He would follow her to whatever terrible, painful end.

 

A few hours past sundown on a Saturday night, and the tavern was alive. Loud and boisterous, full of drink, cheer, and excellent company: a good place, for forgetting.

Or, _trying_ to forget. It had, after all, only been a few days since he’d vanished out the window at Asra’s—Aredhel’s?—apothecary, the memory still recent enough to cause a twinge of pain when it resurfaced. He had not seen her since. 

In his stronger moments, he was determined that he would not see her again.

(That thought—that this might be the end—pained him, too.)

In the corner of the tavern a pair of musicians strummed a lively melody on a pair of balalaikas. The music could barely be heard over the animated conversation and the riotous card games being played in the corners. Every so often a cry of triumph (or anguished defeat) would cut through the din, drowning out the melody entirely. Still they lilted, pleasant and comforting: folk songs from far away Nevivon. 

Ilya had nearly been dragged into one of rowdy card games himself, but he’d only played a single hand before he’d been pulled away. He was a regular here (the tavern was, after all, his favorite haunt) and the other patrons recognized him: Ilya, the _doctor._

And so his night out had turned into a kind of improvised consultation, with the other people in the tavern gathering around him. They asked his advice on how to guard against catching the plague, or how best to care for their loved ones who had fallen ill. 

(Here, in one of the city’s poorest quarters, the Count hardly spared a thought for them: the palace cared not about the prevalence of infection or disease, or the total of the dead. No one was knocking down doors to drag the sick out of bed and cart them to the Lazaret. These people were abandoned—they had been left to fend for themselves.)

Although it had pulled him away from his cards, Ilya did not mind. It made him feel good, to help others, advising them on herbal remedies that might alleviate the symptoms and suffering of the sick. He’d come to the tavern only because he did not want to be alone with his thoughts. He did not care what he occupied himself with, now that he had arrived.

Although the task at hand certainly made it more difficult to forget why he had sought the distraction of company to begin with.

“I’ll bring you the powdered snow root tomorrow, Rodya,” Ilya said, folding his hands around the other man’s as a sign of his promise. “Have Marta mix it with rose hips, essence of cat’s claw, and curcuma. If you don’t have the other ingredients, Mazelinka can help you out.”

Rodya was looking at him with tears in his eyes. “Gods smile upon you, Ilya, and grant you every happiness.” His brother had been sick for a long time; by Rodya’s telling, he probably did not have very long left before he succumbed to the plague. But the tea would give him some peace in his last days, for which Rodya was thankful. 

But Rodya's gratitude, effusive as it was, made Ilya uneasy—it felt undeserved, and each mention of the curative (along with all the others that the she-witch had devised and taught him) had stirred within him just those memories that he had come to the tavern to run from.

“Always at your service, Rodya,” Ilya replied, forcing a grin as he released his hands and clapped the other man genially on the shoulders. “If you need anything else—anything at all—leave a note at my apartment. But if you’ll excuse me, it seems I’m dry.”

He reached behind him and grabbed his empty stein, swirling the dregs of his last ale for emphasis, before squeezing past Rodya and making his way back to the bar.

And with the evening he was having, well… he’d need something stronger, this time.

All the way across the tavern, he was accosted with greetings:

“Good to see you, Ilya. Been looking after yourself? Don’t wear yourself too thin.”

“Where have you been, Ilyushka? We’ve missed you this past week.”

“Hope you’re not treating the Count too well, if you catch my drift.”

By the time he’d squeezed through the crush of bodies to the bar counter, his mood had lifted once more. He was welcome here—all he needed to settle was a little more drink to take the edge off. He drummed his hands on the counter, favoring the bartender with a devilish grin.

“Two salty bitters, please, Bartholomew.”

Bartholomew raised an eyebrow at him, voice wry. “Two? Why not three?”

Ilya only grinned. The suggestion had been made facetiously, but now that he mentioned it, yes, _three_ strong drinks sounded like the perfect remedy. "You know me well, Barth. Make it three, then.”

With a barely audible grumble, Bartholomew turned, fixing Ilya’s drinks. Ilya watched him eagerly, comfortable even as the bodies of others jostled around him, squeezing up to the counter and clamoring for Barth’s attention.

He’d been surrounded by well-wishers and warm greetings all night, so Ilya thought nothing of it when he felt a gentle hand on the small of his back, sliding across his spine. The touch sent a pleasurable tingle running through him—but it only lasted for a moment before the pleasure turned to shock when he turned and realized who, exactly, was touching him.

Shock, then _breathlessness_ —deflating at once, limp and empty and useless as the sails on the spice ship when the winds died. A potent cocktail of emotion, bowling him over harder than anything Barth could have put in his drink.

Her eyes are rimmed with kohl, the black of the makeup making incontrovertibly clear that her corneas are in fact white, not red. That alone has seized his heart, though he hardly dares to believe it ( _that she might cured, safe, at last!_ ) but it’s more than that. The sight of her has his heart skipping. She’s painted her lips a bold shade of crimson. Her arms are bare, showing off the wealth of ink along her forearms, oak leaves and ivy twining around her wrists. Her fingers glisten with stones set in elaborate carvings, sigils scored on their surface. From her left ear dangles what looks like a bone, carved with some inscrutable, ancient writing; from her right, a single feather, black and iridescent. 

She looks healthy, alive… enchanting. And she is giving him her most winning smile—so pleased with herself for having found him. 

(In that instant—upon laying eyes on her, _magnificent_ —he knew that whatever was about to begin on that night would only end badly. And yet he knew just as well, looking at her as she was, that he lacked utterly the will to stop it. He would follow her to whatever terrible, painful end.)

“Aredhel!” he exclaimed, and as he turned to face her she only moseyed closer to him, draping her arm comfortably around his waist. “What—what are you doing here? Are you…” he began, but hardly dared speak the words. Healed. Cured. “Did Asra...? You're eyes, they—”

“Oh,” she said, and her smile faltered. “No, I just…” and she leaned in close to him, close enough that hardly anyone else could look her in the face (their noses nearly touching; Ilya did not even dare _breathe_ ) before she blinked, very slowly. 

There it was. The ruby red in her corneas. But with another blink it was gone, and she was gone with it, retreating to a comfortable, less intimate distance. 

“I glamoured myself,” she said, answering his unasked question with another sly grin. “It's easy magic. Usually for disguises, but it works just as well to make me look less sick. I suppose that is kind of a disguise, too.”

Ilya's heart turned leaden. He shouldn't care for her—not anyway as deeply as he does, a feeling he is certain is unreciprocated—but the thought that she might have been cured… he had not thought of Lucio, not even thought of the people lying sick at the Lazaret, nor the subjects lying caged in the laboratory beneath the palace. He had only felt relief, to know that she was safe.

_Foolish. Selfish._

Bartholomew returned, placed his glasses in front of him, shallow tumblers rimmed with salt. And as the glass meets the counter, he remembers: he came here to forget her. 

“You shouldn't be here, Aredhel,” he said, passing her a disapproving glance out of the corner of his eye as he slid the three glasses across the counter towards himself. “You could get caught.”

She rolled her ( _white! a lie, a deception_ ) eyes at him. “You sound like Asra.” And it shouldn't please him, the weary dismissiveness in her tone when she says his name, but it does. “I used to go out like this all the time in the beginning, before he asked me to stop.”

“Then why are you out now?” Ilya asked, raising the first glass to his mouth. 

(Surely, he is too sober to be having this conversation.)

“Well, Asra is gone for the night, for one,” Aredhel said, “so he won’t know I've snuck out.” Then she smiled, reached across the surface of the bar to run her fingers over the back of his hand, tracing circles across his wrist. Her voice lowered, the tone of it turning dreamy. 

“I didn't—I haven't been out of the house for so long. I wanted to surprise you,” she said, with a sultry smile. Then she leaned closer to him, her lips close to his ear when she whispers, voice low and velvet, “Wanted to see where my good, slippery boy slips off to when he wants to be bad.”

And, no, yes—definitely there, there was something in her voice. _Suggestive._

_My good, slippery boy._

He tilted back the tumbler, poured the entirety of the salty bitter down his throat as she pulled her head away from his, still smiling that maddening crescent moon smile.

Aredhel watched him, eyes lidded, amusement in her gaze as he set the empty glass back on the bar. His head swam at the sudden rush of the alcohol— _still only tipsy, not enough, not enough for this_ —but he had enough sense in him to pull his hand out from beneath hers, to clear his throat and to look at her sternly.

“Now, see here, Aredhel, there's something—it's good you're here, really. We need to talk.”

Something about the set of his face—he was trying so hard to be firm and decisive—made her laugh. She hid the undignified giggle behind her hand. 

Her other hand—the one still wrapped around his waist—slid, neatly, to perch on his hip.

“All we do is talk, Ilya.”

And that—there—the way she said his name. The way it was supposed to sound. When Asra said it, it sounded like he was talking to a dog in need of a scolding, but when she said it, it sounded _warm_. Like a lit hearth at home in the cold of winter.

That made it a lot harder to say what he had to say next.

“A different kind of talk, then. Serious.” He pushed his empty glass to the side, reaching for his second. Stared into the wood grains of the bar, carved and stained with years of spills, trying to focus on anything but that sight of her. Took a deep breath.

But before he could begin, she interrupted him. “Are you mad at me?”

When he found the courage to look at her again, he saw that her face had fallen. She had pulled her bottom lip ( _so red—!_ ) between her teeth and was nibbling it, anxiously. And he realized, then, that this must be why she had come here, sought him out on her own. She knew that she had wounded him—might have even worked out that she’d hurt him badly enough to discourage him from coming back. 

Ilya found himself torn. He wanted to be honest with her—that would probably be best. He should tell her how it had to be: that the thing between them, unnameable nothing that it was, had become too painful, too complicated; that he would like nothing more than for her to walk out into the night and go back to her shop before Asra found her missing.

(Although that last bit would be a lie.)

Yet she had come here. Crossed the city to find him, and that meant something, even if that act of contrition was not enough to heal his hurt.

Ilya pulled his eyes away from her; too difficult, to look at her like this. “No, I’m not mad,” he said, quietly. His hands found his second glass, lifted it to his mouth to knock back more of the foul liquor.

“Oh, Ilya." She sighed, and the sound of it was sweet. "You’re very clever, but you’re a terrible liar.” 

She pulled away from him, her hand slipping from its perch at his waist. The loss of that touch (more welcome than he cared to admit) had him tilting back his glass, chugging desperately, willing himself not to chase it.

When he set the empty glass back on the bar, she was looking at him, thoughtful but hesitant. On edge of—something. Then, without warning, she reached across the bar and seized the third (and only remaining) salty bitter, raising it to her lips.

“Oh, ‘Red, I don’t think you’ll—”

But she was already swallowing, the glass tilted up to her face. He watch, transfixed, as she drained the cup of its foul contents. And oh, he was drunker than he’d like to admit: the sight of her lovely throat, bobbing up and down as she drank, inspired a thought so filthy in him that he felt the tips of his ears coloring at his own audacity.

She slammed the glass on the counter, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, and gave a sigh. “Okay,” she breathed, pushing back from the bar. She drummed her fingers in a ripple once, twice. “Okay. We’ll talk. But first, I just…” and then she smiled at him, the look of it somehow bashful and guilty at once.

“I arranged a surprise. For you. To try and make up for hurting you." Her hands moved across the bar as if she were going to reach for him, take his hands in her own… but then she stopped herself, folding her fingers together, squeezing a little too tightly. “Will you let me show you, first? We can talk when we get there.”

Oho. A surprise? What kind of surprise? And how on earth did she manage to do that without leaving the house, and on such short notice? 

Ilya wanted to resist. He knew that the best course would be to put his foot down right then and there. He had… ample opportunity, to push her away, to send her back home. He should, most certainly, not _leave with her._

…But curiosity won out. He wanted to know, at least, what she had planned for him.

(Wanted to chase the feeling of her hand on his waist. Wanted to see if she’d hold him again, whether or not that was a good idea.)

 

 

It was summertime, then. Earlier that day a storm had broke upon the port town as fierce and as crushing as the waves that broke upon the shore, drenching buildings and boats in the heavy summer rain. The streets were still soaked, and the puddles and the canals reflected the starlight, and the moonlight. The air was still thick with the smell of the rain. It had left the night mercifully cool.

Aredhel and Ilya walked side by side in silence. Ilya’s gait wavered a little under the influence of the drinks he’d just imbibed, but her steps (remarkably) were steady. His hands were stuffed deep into his pockets. Better to give them something to do, bury them so that he did not reach ( _for her_.)

After the rowdiness of the pub had faded behind them, and they turned down a street with no other pedestrians, Aredhel had tilted her head up towards the sky. Then she hummed, a sad smile about her lips, folded her arms over her chest.

(Was that, he wondered, to stop herself from reaching for him?)

When she broke the silence, her eyes were fixed on her feet. “I saw you, you know. Before we met at the bar.”

“Oh?” 

“Yeah,” she said, grin widening. “Helping that man. Everyone was talking about you. You’re quite the celebrity.”

Ilya peered at her out of the corner of his eye. “That praise should be yours, Aredhel. I wouldn’t have been able to help anyone, if it weren't for your remedies.”

“What? No,” and she moved closer, swayed her gait just enough to collide with him, her body playfully bumping into his. “Doesn’t matter if I came up with it. You’re delivering it; you’re bringing them what they need.” Then she paused, her gaze still locked on her shoes; when she spoke next, her voice was soft, kind. 

“You’re a good man, Ilya. Deserving of every ounce of praise you get.”

Ilya swallowed, pulling his eyes away from her and staring at the street ahead. 

This was precisely why he should not have left the tavern. This was why he should have turned her away from the start. This, this feeling: warm, and wondrous, and from no more than a few words. He wanted to touch her, to wrap her in his arms and kiss the crown of her head and mumble words of thanks into her hair. He would lay the world at her feet just to hear her call him ‘ _good_ ’ again. 

But Ilya knew himself neither to be good nor deserving. Aredhel has only seen the parts of him he has cared to reveal; she knows not where he goes when they are parted. And this, really—more than Asra, more than being rushed out the window—should be reason enough to call the whole thing off. 

( _Wanted to see where my good, slippery boy slips off to when he wants to be bad._ But if she had wanted to see him at his worst, she should have found him at the palace.)

“Ah!” she exclaimed. “We’re here.”

She seized his hand in his, dragging him onwards. ‘Here’ was a squeeze, a passage between two buildings so slim it could hardly be described as an alley. Ilya had to turn sideways to fit his broad shoulders through. But as they shimmied down the passage, Ilya could hear the sea… not the rush of Vesuvia’s canals under foot, but the rumble of a proper tide. And the smell of salt in the air-ever present, even in the heart of the city-grew thicker.

On the side of the passage stretched an unfamiliar bay; Ilya was not sure he’d ever come this way before. And tied to the dock was a small boat—paint peeling, well loved—bobbing cheerily in the water.

“You talked about sailing,” Aredhel said, staring out at the water. “How you loved it. You promised to take me, if I got better. And I’m not. But I thought, with my one night of freedom… maybe we could go anyway.”

Ohh, that was dangerous. If Ilya was a hopeless romantic on land, he was twice as bad on the water. If he stepped with her into that skiff he’d be waxing poetic about the moon and the ocean and her eyes before the night was out. But the salty wind was whipping through his hair (he remembered, fleetingly, the gentle way her fingers had combed through it) and tugging at his shirt as though the sea itself was willing him onto her dark waters, and he was not sure he’d be able to resist.

He had to give her credit: she’d chosen a beautiful night for a sail.

And she was looking at him again—hopeful, waiting for an answer.

_Say something, you numbskull._

“How, uhh.” Ilya pointed to the skiff, cleared his throat. “How did you get that?”

Aredhel smiled, smoothing her hair back from her face. “I helped a fisherman, once. He needed a tonic to break his daughter’s fever. He couldn’t pay, so I just gave it to him. Every once in awhile he lets me borrow his boat.”

Purpose in her stride, she walked to the edge of the dock. With an easy hop, her feet met the bottom of the skiff. She turned, balancing herself against the swell of the water, and extended her hand to his. An invitation too tempting to refuse. 

“You coming?”

 

 

The boat was old, but it cut through the bay water like glass. _Cared for well_ , Ilya thought, imagining the time and love that went into the skiff’s maintenance. It was easy paddling. Without breaking a sweat, he guided their ship from the shore. All the while Aredhel gazed out—at the buildings, the bay, the horizon—but always her eyes turned back to him, favoring him with wordless joy and gratitude before they turned back to the world.

(He couldn’t help but notice, what with the arms of the city stretched around the bay, that this was probably the only part of the Vesuvian lagoon from which the sight of the Lazaret—that malevolent fixture of the horizon—was obscured. Though Ilya knew where it was, hidden just behind a slender peninsula to the east.)

Once they were far from the dock, Aredhel crouched, sliding off her bench at the prow of the skiff to lie down, face up, in the belly of the boat.

Something clenched in his gut at the sight; he longed to reach for her, pull her up. “‘Red, it's damp down there. You shouldn’t—”

“What's going to happen?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow. “Am I going to catch a cold?” 

There was a wry amusement in her tone. Truth is, she was probably right. Deep in the plague as she is, a little saltwater wouldn't make much of a difference. But it’s a risk Ilya would rather she not take. She should stay warm; if she’s going to do this (go out of doors, be reckless) she could at least be a little more considerate of her health. 

She patted the floor of the skiff beside her, beckoning for him to join her. “Come on. It's a clear night.”

And oh, he shouldn’t, he really, _really_ shouldn’t—

But he rationalizes it like this: if he’s beside her, she’ll probably be less cold. And that’s for the best, right? In a weird, sort of messed up way, she is his patient; it is his duty to look after her, to the best of his ability. To do anything less would be in violation of the oath he took when he became a doctor.

So he lifted the oars into the boat, leaning them against its side, before kneeling and stretching out beside her. 

The bottom of the skiff is more narrow than it had looked. Ilya had to squeeze to fit beside her, and even then, his shoulders were too broad to fit comfortably. Aredhel raised herself onto her forearm as he adjusted, wriggling into position. When he had settled, she curled close to him, flush against him with her head on his shoulder, his arm behind her neck.

He holds her close as skiff sways in the gentle waves of the bay tide.

The earlier storm had long past cleared out: there is not a cloud in the sky. The moon is but a slender crescent, like the hair of some massive white beast left on a cushion of dark velvet. But with the brightness of the moon diminished, waxing towards its potential, the stars gleam. Even here, in the city, they rival the most beautiful skies he has seen on the spice ship, out in the empty sea.

Ilya can only tear his eyes away from them when he realizes Aredhel is looking at him.

(This was precisely what he should not be doing: arms around her, stargazing as they are rocked by the tide. He could smell her hair, the fragrance woody and spicy. And her eyes are kind, and she is so close, now. It would take so little effort to bring her closer…)

“What did you want to talk about?” she asks, cheek flush to his chest, eyes bright. (Still white. Glamoured, then, for his benefit, too.)

Ilya swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. _I’d give my arm for another bitter, right now_. He had wanted to talk, to tell her to leave. He had wanted to tell her that he did not want to see her again. He had wanted to say, in no uncertain terms, that this was the end; he had wanted to be firm.

All of that seemed incredibly foolish to say, now. And anyway, the feeling of his arms wrapped around her was too good—he was not sure he had the will to push her away from him, though it probably would have been wise. 

He should not have followed her out of the tavern. But laying like this—her body against his, with her looking at him like that, soft in the starlight and full of adoration—he did not regret that he had.

He turned his gaze back to the stars. His voice, soft, barely more than a whisper, concedes:

“It doesn’t seem to matter, now.”

He had leapt into the boat with her; he had rowed them out to sea. If he drowned (in the water, in this feeling, in this foolish thing he should have ended in the tavern) it was his own fault, and no protest to the contrary would absolve him of that responsibility.

Aredhel hummed; he could feel her cheek vibrate with the thoughtful sound. “Yeah. The sky has a way of doing that.” Then she paused, and in the silence, she slipped her hand onto his chest, resting it over his sternum. Ilya’s heart began to pound, madly, against the cage of his ribs.

_Can she feel it, I wonder? Thundering?_

“Do you mind if I say something?” she asked.

“‘Course not.” _Like I could ever say no_.

“I am sorry. For hurting you.” Her voice is soft, and it sounds so small. More vulnerable, maybe, than she’s allowed herself to be with him before. She releases a shaking exhale before she continues. “I care for you deeply, Ilya. Knowing that I had caused you pain… I felt terribly, about that.”

He wills his heart to stillness, but it does not obey him. If anything, when he turns his head to face her once more, it quickens is pace. 

_I care for you._

She is not looking at him: her eyes are fixed on her fingers, drawing spirals on his chest as she struggles with the words. “I owe you… more than I can ever repay. Just when I thought the sun was setting, you barged into my life and made it bright again. Thank you, for giving that to me.”

And then she does turn her eyes upwards, meeting his. Her hand slides up his chest to touch his jaw, gently, her fingers tracing down the column of his throat. Her voice is barely more than a whisper; if they were not so close, he wouldn't hear it at all. 

“Such a surprise, finding you here at the end. I’m not sure I deserve it.”

The way she’s looking at him, all wonder and worship, rivals the sight of the stars themselves. This is the loveliest she has ever looked—and this is the most desperately he has ever wanted her. Even in the darkness of the night he can see the paint on her lips, just parted as she watches him. He wants to tell her she is deserving of every comfort, every pleasure, that it is _he_ who is the undeserving wretch. Her mouth is so close—

And is it a trick of his imagination, or did she lean closer to him?

_I care for you._

He is a weak and selfish man—not half as good as she claims him to be—and he can feel his self-control crumbling like an ancient ruin. Not knowing what she tasted like… it was an agony he could no longer endure.

He raises his free hand to cup her cheek, gently, and pull her face to his.

She goes willingly, pliant at once; in the moment before their mouths meet she releases a shuddering exhale, winding her hand around his neck to pull him closer. 

It is all the encouragement he needs to close the space between them. 

The kiss is tender, at first. Her lips are tentative, gentle, as though she can scarcely believe it. But even the near-chaste press of her mouth to his is enough to release the flood of longing that he has felt for her since the night he met her, like a key to a lock; he aches for her, he is _hungry_.

His hand slides from her face, down the side of her body to her waist, drawing her closer; his arm tightens around her shoulders. The boat rocks uneasily beneath them as he pulls her body flush to his. When she presses her thigh between his legs and finds him already half-hard, she keens, weakly, with desire; Ilya swallows the sound, shuddering with pleasure, surging against her. It is too much and not enough, wrong but so good, and there’s a fair chance, he realizes, that they’ll end up fucking in the bottom of the boat before the night’s out. 

He doesn't mind. Won't be his first time. 

He drags her hips closer to his; she’s drawn over him, practically straddling him. Out at sea, there's no one to hear them- he doesn't not stifle the moan she pulls out of him when her waist grinds against his. She trails a line of kisses and bites from the corner of his mouth over his jaw and down his throat, her hand winding in the auburn hair at the nape of his neck and pulling, deliciously, just like—

Just like Asra had.

And when he opens his eyes, she’s looking at him the same way Asra did, too. Eyes shining with some dark, sensual energy. A little bit fierce.

(A little bit dangerous.)

And that was it—that broke it. His senses returned to him; he shot upwards.

“No, nope. _Nyet_."

He eased his arm out from beneath her and sat up, lifting himself back onto the bench at the stern. He pressed his legs tightly together as though he could will away the evidence of his arousal.  When he folds his hands in his lap, he finds they are trembling.

Aredhel watches him, hesitant, puzzled. Slowly she lifts herself upright, but does not climb out of the bottom of the boat. Seawater seeps into her skirt; she looks like some kind of siren, powerful enough to draw him back to her with her voice alone.

He will need to speak first.

And there are so many things to tell her, a thousand reasons why they should not be together. Every moment she spends with him puts her in greater jeopardy—it is only a matter of time before Valdemar finds out where he has been sneaking off to. And if she wants to hold him, kiss him, it is only because he has fabricated for her benefit a version of himself that she will find easier to love. The way she perceives him is built on a terrible lie: she really believes him to be good.

He is not. The evidence is in his actions: he should tell her these things. Reveal himself to her now as he really is, hideous and twisted, hands bloodied, capable of inflicting such suffering on others. But every time he tries to string the words together, all he can think about is Asra's voice floating up from the first floor of the shop—their shared home—and how eager Aredhel had been to be rid of him. It is this pain, more than the burden of his own deceptions, which causes him to push away from her.

“What's going on, here, Aredhel?” he croaked. “You and Asra... what kind of game are you playing, with me?"

She balked, her whole posture adjusting. “Me and Asra?” she repeated. “He doesn't even know we've been…” but before she finished the sentence, her voice trailed off. It did not need to be said. _Been together. Been seeing each other. Been sneaking around._ She sighed in understanding, and leaned back in the boat, her shoulder blades meeting the bench behind her.

“You are with him, aren't you?” Ilya asked. “That home, you share it. The bed—”

“Asra and I have an arrangement,” she interrupted, arranging her skirt about her knees, adjusting her shirt where it had rode up her midriff from all of Ilya’s pawing. “It is a good one. It ensures that each of us gets what we need.”

“If the arrangement is so good, then why are you cheating on him?” It took all of his bravery to ask her, “…is it to get back at him, for what he did with me?”

She sighed, exasperated, crossing her arms over her chest. “No one’s cheating on anyone, Ilya.”

But Ilya knew how these things worked. Whatever… _arrangement_ they had, it had to be based on honesty, if it worked as well as she claimed. And she was most certainly being dishonest. 

“Then why did I have to climb out the window?” he insisted, his face twisting into a grimace. “If we… if I keep meeting you. Are you going to tell him?”

“I’m…” her voice trailed off again, and she tore her gaze from his, looking over the side of the boat out at the sea. “I don’t know.”

“Is that what you want? To keep meeting like this, behind his back?”

“I don’t know.”

“And if—if I do find the cure. If Asra, or anyone finds it. What then? What happens after you get better?”

She turned her head back to him, and her gaze was stone-hard. 

“I’m not going to get better, Ilya.”

The way she said it, with such certainty, broke his heart. But he would not believe it—he refused to. It would be too cruel an injustice if Lucio survived his sickness and she did not. She would be well—she must be. Someone would save her in time, even if it had to be someone more clever than him. He will not relinquish that hope so easily, even if she already has.

“But what,” he asked her, his voice cracking, “if you did?”

She ran her hand through her hair, turning away from him again. “I don’t _know_ , Ilya.”

“Well what _do_ you know?”

Her lips parted. Her eyes scanned the bobbing tide, skirting over its surface as though it held the words she sought. “I know I am going to die,” she said, slowly. But there was no fear in her voice, only certainty, and a kind of peace. “I know that Asra refuses to believe it. That he has left me to chase a vain hope, to be my white knight, to save me….”

But then she turned back to him, looking hopeless and helpless, her hands worrying the hem of her dress anxiously.

“What do you want me to tell you, Ilya?” she asked. “That I think about you all the time when you are not near me? …That I want you?” She swallowed thickly, shaking her head, as if even the act of divulging these secret desires to him was ridiculous. “What would it change if I told you that these days I've spent with you have meant more than these months with Asra? What does it matter, if in time I could even come to…” but her voice faltered, and she scoffed. When she met his eyes again, the gentleness was gone from them, the edge back in her voice.

“There is no time, Ilya. There's only this. I am sorry if that is not enough for you. It is all I can give.”

And he wishes it was. But she is asking him to watch her die: that much is clear. She wants him—or someone—to be there for her in a way that Asra has decided not to be. But if he gives in, if he allows her that, he will only come to love her. She is asking him to love her, knowing he will lose her, and he cannot. He is not strong enough.

“It isn’t.”

Her face falls. She draws her knees up towards her chest, making herself smaller. “So that’s it, then, I guess?”

“…That’s it.”

She turns away from him, raising herself back onto the bench, turning her gaze out to sea.

“I think I’d like you to take me home, now.”

 

 

Ilya rows the skiff back to the city in silence. Aredhel won’t even look at him. The entire ride, she sits with her back to him, legs folded beneath her on the bench of the skiff, watching the moon fall on the water. Though she is mere feet away she feels so far from him, as cold and distant as the stars overhead. It is difficult to believe that only moments ago he was holding her; at the thought, he feels a lump forming in his throat.

 _It’s better like this_ , he tells himself. _I made the right choice._

But he’s less certain than he’d like to be.

By the time they reach the door to her shop, not a word has passed between them. She slips her key in the lock, turns the knob, and Ilya feels some fresh, hot panic begin to well up inside of him. _It’s happening. It’s ending_. When she says farewell, she only turns her head far enough to throw the words over her shoulder—still, it seems, incapable of looking at him.

“Goodnight Ilya.”

Her wrist is in his hand before he even registers that he’s seized it, keeping her here on the threshold, not yet past the door. He wants to say something, can’t let this moment pass in cowardice. If he is strong, if he can resist the urge to come crawling back, it is probably the last time he will ever look on her. 

 _Be well_ , he wanted to say. _I am sorry. But I push, and I ruin things; you probably already knew this about me._

Or, _I will save you. I will spend sleepless nights in the palace—the library, and even the lab—until I find the answer, find the cure, make you well. And then—_

“Aredhel?”

The lamps of the shop glow, soft and yellow, all at once. 

Out of the darkness, Asra emerges.

And Ilya—Ilya felt the urge to run, abandon all parting words and flee into the night before Aredhel’s apprentice catches sight of him. But he could not will his feet to move. 

“Where were you?” Asra asks, padding barefoot towards the door. “You didn't even leave a note. If Faust hadn't seen you go, I would have thought—”

But then Asra stopped mid-stride. Looked right at Ilya. 

Ilya felt his stomach clench so violently he thought he might retch. 

Asra’s tone of voice changed entirely: when he spoke next, the concern and affection were gone, replaced with something that managed, remarkably, to sound indifferent and cold and furious all at once. 

“What were you doing with him?”

Ilya swallowed. _Go. Leave now._ “Actually, I was just going.”

“Oh?” Asra asked, coolly. “You don't wanna stay?”

Ilya grimaced. He held Asra’s gaze for as long as he could endure, trying to be defiant, not as wretched as he felt. Then he looked up at Aredhel, released her hand. 

Whatever he had wanted to say, he will not speak of it in front of Asra.

“Goodnight, ‘Red.”

He fled the step; he did not wait for her response. But he did not get far enough before he heard Asra’s voice, thick with disdain, ask her:

“'Red?' Really?”

Is there liquor at his apartment? He does not know, but he will need it. And no company, this time, he thinks. The drink will turn him pathetic, make him look as hopeless as he feels. Better not to do that in public, if it can be avoided. He will nurse the burning ache in his chest until he can no longer feel it or until sleep claims him—whichever comes first. Probably sleep. He prays that it is dreamless.

( _He had known—he had known this would only end badly_.)

 

 

 

“So I take it that wasn't the first time?”

Asra’s voice is quiet. Aredhel has not heard him sound so small and broken since she took him in off the streets. He’s hunched on the staircase like a wounded thing—he had collapsed there, hands on his knees, as soon she’d shut the door on Ilya.

_This is exactly what I did not want._

She let her glamour fall from her like a veil, ran a hand through her hair to try to tame it, still windswept from their sail. There’s salt crusting on her skirt where the seawater has dried, white stains on black, like the stars she’d admired. She gathers it in her hands as she kicks off her shoes, taking a few tentative steps closer to Asra. There is no room for distance between them, not in this house.

“It was the first time I left the house,” she said. “It was not the first time I spent time with him.”

Asra ducked his head out from the shelter of his hunched shoulders. The look he gives her is incredulous. “He came here? Again?”

Aredhel nodded in answer. “He was looking for you. He found me.”

Her eyes are drawn to movement on the upper landing; Faust is slithering down the stairs towards them. 

 _She senses his distress_. 

The thought is bittersweet, and Aredhel feels a swell of both pride and pain as the snake makes her way towards them. Faust was maturing so well; Aredhel is sure that she will grow into a fine familiar. But the fact that she has wounded Asra so terribly that he has reached for his familiar, that she has come to his call, is… upsetting. Faust slithers along his leg, up his arm to drape, comfortably, around his neck. When the familiar regards Aredhel, she flicks her tongue at her in a way that feels almost accusatory.

It might be. Aredhel knows that she would certainly deserve it.

_He was not supposed to be home tonight. I did not want this._

She moves closer to the two of them, that inseparable pair, seating herself one stair below Asra. She does not know if there is anything she can do, now, to heal the wound she has inflicted upon him. But she will certainly try.

She raises her hand to place it gently on his knee, peering up into his face. “What do you want to know? What can I tell you?”

He lifts his head just enough to peer at her behind a curtain of white curls. “I’m not sure I want to know anything else. I think I know enough.”

That—her stomach twisted, at that. It’s almost worse than if he had asked to know everything. She would have told him. There is little left to hide, now. Whatever was happening, whatever it was… it’s over. She knows that. She wants him to know it, too.

As if he can read her mind (and maybe he can—maybe by now he can sense it in her aura) he looks up, regards her seriously. 

“No, wait. There's one thing. Are you going to sneak out again?”

Aredhel smiled in response, but it is bittersweet. “No, I don't think so. Tonight, with him…. It was a little bit of a disaster, to be honest. I doubt it will happen again.”

Asra snorted. “That sounds like Ilya. I’m not surprised.”

“Not his fault," she said, quietly. In this, she will defend him: if anyone has broken what was between them, she is sure she is to blame. “But either way I think, this—I think this is the end of that.” 

(She wants to be honest—but she chose to leave out the part where she’d had to ride back to shore with her back turned, willing her body into stillness even as the tears fell down her cheeks, holding herself in check so that she did not sob. So that Ilya did not notice. There was no reason, she thinks, to tell Asra that the whole affair had affected her so deeply she’d cried about it.)

“Still, I should have told you,” she continues, with a sniff. “So I recognize that I have no right to ask this if you. But perhaps—if you see him, at the palace or around town, will you please try to be kind?”

Asra’s expression is inscrutable when he meets her eyes. “Will you tell me if you see him again?”

“I'm not going to,” Aredhel replied, but she could hear the pain of those words in the tone of her voice and immediately regrets it. She wished she could say it without sounding quite so _anguished_.

“But if you do?”

“Okay. Yeah.” She won’t, though. See Ilya again. Fairly soon she won’t have the strength left to sneak out of the bed, nevermind the house; she’s not about to go chasing Ilya, and he is _certainly_ not coming back. It will be an easy promise to keep. “‘Course I will, Asra.”

She must have looked contrite—Asra reached for her, his hand coming to rest, gently, on the crown of her head. 

“I'm am sorry, Asra,” she says, closing her eyes and leaning into his palm. The touch comforts her, though not as greatly as it once did. In his absence she has only felt longing, and her fondness has calcified into a bitterness… but she cannot hold it against him. She has asked, perhaps, too much of him. She knows it is not easy to accept the death of someone beloved. “I shouldn't have kept it from you, but I didn't want you to worry. I knew you would, if you found out someone else knew I was here.”

Asra’s fingers run through her hair, scratching her scalp the way he knows she likes. His voice is thoughtful, not saturated with the same contempt he had used in front of Ilya when he asks her, “Do you trust him?”

The answer comes quick and easy: “I do.”

Asra’s lips quirked into a sly smile. “Well, it’s your funeral.” Looking at her with mischief, and Aredhel can’t help but laugh at it. 

Every once in awhile, despite how uncomfortable he was with the whole thing, Asra’s gallows humor was really good.

“You know, I'm less mad about Ilya then the fact that you snuck out,” Asra said. And she realized now how much it must have worried him, to come home and find her gone. She was sorry to have done that to him. To make him afraid for her. “Something could have happened, and I wouldn't have known. Wouldn’t’ve been able to help you.”

“I know. But I'm stir crazy here, Asra, You have to realize that.”

“But it's almost over,” Asra said, taking her hands in his. His eyes are intense, willing her to trust him, trust _in_ him. “I’m close. I know you don't believe me— you think it's already over, too late for you, and that's why you're reckless. But it's not, Aredhel. I'm going to find the cure. Soon.” He smooths her hair back from her forehead, a frown wrinkling his features when he finds it warm. 

“I just need you to be careful a little bit longer. Because it won't matter if I find the cure, not if you’ve been caught, taken somewhere we can't keep you healthy, if you're already…”

 _Dead_. He didn't need to say it. 

And she did not believe him. Long ago she had hid the dark tomes that would have given him the answer beneath the floorboards under the bed—he would not find them. Never open their pages and discover the dark secrets that would have kept breath in her lungs but asked far too much of him. 

Her apprentice, strong in the ways of magic but still so green. Never around because he was working so hard—she had not been able to convince him that she'd rather spend her last days here, with him, instead of alone, waiting for a cure that might not come.

Still, despite that, she is so _proud_ of him sometimes it feels like it is too big for her. Like she might weep for it.

She lifts her hand from his knee, running her knuckles tenderly over his cheek.

“You know however I feel about him, it does not diminish the love I feel for you.”

“I know that.” He said, taking her hand in his. “But it is, isn’t it? Diminishing.”

And what is she supposed to say to that? To lie would feel harmless, but it is the accumulation of lies and dishonesty and deception that has brought her to this point, consoling him on the stair. To tell the truth would hurt him just the same. 

In the end, her hesitation is answer enough.

And then, it comes; that dreadful dry tickle in the bottom of her lungs. Before she knows it, she’s coughing, a spasm in her chest, wet blood on the floorboards. It’s the worst spell she’s had in days. Her throat feels as though it is on fire.

She is thankful the hacking has her doubled over—she is sure she cannot bare whatever expression is painting Asra’s face as he rubs his hands in circles over her back. 

At least he is kind enough not to say _I told you so_ , that he was right to ask her not to go out.

“Come on upstairs,” he says, softly, when it finally passes. “I’ll make you some of that tea, for the cough.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *updated 4/24


	4. Imagine the Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His heart skipped a beat in his chest. His hands scrambled, frantic over the surface of his desk, searching for the tinder box. Papers crammed with illegible notes fluttered to the ground, books tumbling after them before his fingers closed around it. It took him a couple of times to light the flint: his hands were trembling. 
> 
> Once the candle was lit he did not even bother to sit, too eager to confirm what he had thought he had seen in the dark, bending over the desk and bringing the parchment into the candle’s light, breath held....
> 
> And yes, there—his name. Ilya. In slanted, sweet handwriting, a little flourish at the tail of the 'y.'
> 
> Even in the dark, without the aid of the candle, he had recognized the penmanship as hers. 

By the time Ilya's eyes are too weary to go on reading, the palace has settled into its late night silence, the moon already sinking in its arc across the sky. 

After that night in the skiff, out on the lagoon, Ilya had thrown himself tirelessly into the work: it was the only thing left that he could believe in with unshakable conviction. He still did not know whether he had made the right choice, when he had chosen to leave her. To refuse her. But he could not bear to think on the memory for long. It was a carousel of hurt, one swelling ache chasing after another: her back turned to him on the row inland, too disappointed to look at him; the disdain in Asra’s voice when he'd addressed him on the threshold; the way Aredhel had curled close to him, breath sweet on his cheek and hand on his chest when she had told him, _I care for you_. 

Too much pain, there. If Ilya let himself stew in the memories he'd never get anything done. He'd already wasted two days: in the aftermath, he'd not been able to drag himself out of bed, crippled by the thought that he had made a mistake—or nothing but mistakes, all the wrong choices from beginning to end. 

The only thing that had got him going again was the work. He channeled all of his heartache and self-loathing into searching—endlessly, _desperately_ —for a cure. It brought him back to the palace, but even Lucio's company, his cruelty and contempt, was a welcome distraction from the mess he'd gotten himself into. 

Sometimes, he is almost able to delude himself: in these moments, he nearly believes he is doing it because it is the right thing to do. Because it is noble. Because he wants to prove he is as good as she’d said he was.

But he is a fool—Ilya knows this as well as anyone—and the truth, he knows, is that he is doing it because of the impossible chance that he might succeed.  That he might yet change things, _save_ her. 

If he is a fool—and he most certainly is—he is working at this relentless, exhaustive pace for none but her, turning himself into a shade of a man, possessed of one obsessive purpose. 

Tonight, however, after all day in the dungeon working under Valdemar's instruction and deep into the night reading in the library by candlelight, even Ilya recognized he may have reached his limit. 

As he always did, he weighed the possibility of meandering down to the kitchens, striking the books again with a carafe of coffee in hand. There was always someone awake and willing to oblige in the palace, ready to assist those who had come under the pretense of working to cure the Count. In fact, Ilya knew the older woman who worked the kitchens at this hour quite well: she was kind to him, fond of him, always berating him in a good natured, motherly sort of way for working himself so hard. He enjoyed their idle chats almost as much as he enjoyed her coffee—always brewed at double strength, the way she knew he liked it.

But tonight... tonight, he really needed the rest. 

He rose out of his chair, snuffed the candles on his desk. As the last curling wisps of smoke rose from the charred wicks the library fell into shadow, Ilya’s eyes struggled to make out the shapes of the bookshelves in the dark. By now, though, he knew the library like the back of his hand. His hands hardly searched before they found his coat, lifting it off the back of his chair and shrugging it over his shoulders. 

He gave a languid stretch, before burying his hands in his pockets and turning towards the ornate library door. 

But wait, that was—hmm. _Curious_. His fingers fussed over the foreign object, feeling out the edges of the slender slip. 

What was in his pocket?

It was possible he had simply misplaced something. He had not worn the coat in a few days—the weather had been too warm for it. Only the chill after the rain, so frequent and heavy in the summer, had encouraged him to carry it from his apartment, anticipating the coolness of the night. That morning, however, it had been warm enough that he had only slung it over his forearm. 

He pulled the parchment out of his pocket; it crinkled in his hands as it came free. His eyes had adjusted somewhat to the dark, and though and the moon was low slung in its orbit it was swelling to fullness, spilling silver light through the tall windows of the library. If he squinted—

His heart skipped a beat in his chest. His hands scrambled, frantic over the surface of his desk, searching for the tinder box. Papers crammed with illegible notes fluttered to the ground, books tumbling after them before his fingers closed around it. It took him a couple of times to light the flint: his hands were trembling. 

Once the candle was lit he did not even bother to sit, too eager to confirm what he had thought he had seen in the dark, bending over the desk and bringing the parchment into the candle’s light, breath held....

And yes, there—his name. _Ilya_. In slanted, sweet handwriting, a little flourish at the tail of the 'y.'

Even in the dark, without the aid of the candle, he had recognized the penmanship as hers. 

She must have put this note in his pocket days ago. Maybe when he'd come back from the Lazaret, or early on the night they’d—

The night they'd kissed. 

He can hear the unsteadiness in his breath echo through the vaulted ceilings of the library when he exhales. By the time it occurs to him that it would probably be better _not_ to look, to go on ignorant of whatever she has written to him, his fingers are already ripping the missive open. 

(Without realizing it, he's carved out a space in his life for her. And now that she was gone—no more night visits to the apothecary, door opening to find her awaiting his arrival—he felt empty. He has missed her, and he is weak, and he knows himself too well to believe he can resist whatever words she has written for him, however irrelevant their sweetness has now become.)

The first words send a violent spasm clenching his heart:

_To my most treasured friend, Ilya—to be read when you need a little encouragement._

His eyes dart to the top of the page. The letter is dated to one of the days he'd been kept from her, working with Valdemar. She must have... written it while he was away, for him. 

(The image rises in his mind, unbidden, unasked for: Aredhel in the belly of the skiff, worrying the hem of her dress, looking at him with the hope that he will understand. _I think about you all the time when you are not near me._ )

Did she—had she slipped this in his pocket, the night she'd pushed him out the window?

Ohhh, that memory shattered the rosy lens with which he'd been reading. He pushed away from the desk, held the letter as far away from his eyes as his reach would allow, turning his head to the blessed, blind darkness behind him. 

That, thinking of how she'd ushered him so insistently down the side of the house and into the street.... that had hurt. And now, with the benefit of distance, he knows why. What with everything he has done to try and find a cure for the plague—the cruelties he has inflicted in the last two days alone!—she _should_ be ashamed of him, her mere association with him a black tarnish on her splendor. He does not deserve a key to her front door, a place in her light, her life.

And yet....

And yet, he is weak. Not a day has gone by that he has not thought of her: the moonlight reflecting off the water and dappling her face as she smiled at him; the way she hand run her fingers through his hair; the tender look on her face when she'd called him a good man. 

“Oh, for crying out—”

He did not even finish his outcry before he'd pulled the chair away from the desk, dropping himself hastily into it and pulling the candle closer to make out her words more clearly. 

...Ilya is glad, then, that Asra had not come to the library in days. Her apprentice is not present to witness the choked sob he releases when he begins to read—even alone, he quickly covers his mouth with his hand to muffle what sounds would follow.

_I am so lucky to have known you: what a pleasure it has been, growing close to you._

_You are clever and kind, far smarter than you give yourself credit for._

_You are the gentlest man I have ever known, and you deserve far more happiness than you allow yourself._

It was nothing but praise. Pages of it, fond thoughts of him, written down and preserved on the paper for him to find upon his return.

_It brings me a tremendous sense of peace to know that, no matter what happens to me, you will work until you beat this thing. That you will win. There is not a doubt in my mind that you will._

By then he had not finished, but his eyes had grown too wet to read any further. He left the letter on the desk and turned, hunched with his elbows on his knees, fingers knit, thumbs pressing into the bridge of his nose. 

He cannot continue—even the little he has read is too much. His heart feels like it is swelling in his chest but each successive affection has his gut clenched with guilt, regret. 

 _I care for you_. 

She does. Or had. More than Asra had, anyway. And she knew him so well, to have slipped this thing, this startling surprise into his coat pockets to act as a ward against the self-doubt that she knew harried him. What they had—foolish and ill timed thing that it was—it had been real. 

And Ilya had pushed her away. 

Can she forgive him, he wonders, for abandoning her? ...can she forgive him for his dishonesty?

If she cares for him as deeply as she says... oh, he's an idiot. Stupid for waiting so long, when there's so little precious time left.

He can afford to waste no more of it.

He still has the key to the shop. When he races down the palace steps, through the gate and out into the city, that is where he heads. The hour is late, but he does not think she will mind. He knows by now her sleep is fitful, troubled, that she spends long stretches of the evening lying awake. And Asra... well. He does not like the idea of seeing Asra again, and he almost surely will—it is after all _their_ home—but he will figure out how to deal with Asra’s objections when he arrives. 

He is a weak and foolish man, but he is brave enough, he thinks, to open that door....whatever lies in wait behind it. 

 

 

So late in the evening—really the early hours of the morning, though dawn is yet a ways away—the streets are empty. 

Ilya runs. 

He refuses to entertain the thought that by the time he arrives he will be too late—too late to apologize, to beg her forgiveness, to tell her all the things she deserves to hear. _What this has meant to me. I will carry that note close to my breast until the pages wear and the ink colors with age. I care for you, too_. But a dread has settled like a smooth river stone in the pit of his stomach and it spurns him onwards— _faster, faster_ —the clap of his heels slapping the cobbles like thunder in the silence of the night. 

And on the threshold he does not hesitate. His key turns neatly in the lock, and when he swings through the door, he is mindful enough to quiet his steps off chance that either of the house’s residents are asleep. 

Beyond the door, the shop is dark. 

It is not, however, unoccupied. 

Even in the dark Ilya can make out the characteristic shock of white curls that cover Asra's head. But he is not as he should be: not proud and unshakeable, and full of mystery. He's hunched over the counter, back curved with grief, trembling; in the quiet Ilya thinks he can hear sniveling, short little sobs. 

_Oh, no. Oh, please, no._

At the sound of the shop bells jangling, Asra shoots upwards, head whipping towards the door. Ilya steels himself. He expects to be looked upon like an intruder, a trespasser. After how things ended with Aredhel, he supposes that is more or less what he is. 

But he is not prepared, not for the way Asra looks at him—it staggers him. His eyes are shining with tears, and Ilya’s heart stutters in his chest as he realizes Asra looks not annoyed or irritated but _relieved_ to see him. It makes him feel strangely warm, but also frightened, sets that river stone in his stomach churning uncomfortably. 

(Is he already too late, if his arrival has been met with such welcome?)

He thinks Asra has never looked at him like that before. When Asra speaks, his voice is incredulous:

“Ilya?”

“Asra,” Ilya says, crossing the room in a flash, lighting his hand on Asra’s back. He probably shouldn't reach for him, but Ilya can't help himself; the apprentice looks so in need of comforting. And no matter how Asra has treated him, spoken to him, disdain and contempt, always holding him at a distance, this much is true: Ilya has never, really, been able to bring himself to hate him. 

“Are you alright?” he asks, keeping his voice low. “Is she—”

“No, not yet,” Asra replies, bringing his fingers to his eyes to wipe away his tears. “But it won't be long now, I think. I just needed a moment, I—” and then Asra heaves again, but the sob is hitched. He is trying to regain control of himself: his exhale shudders and shakes before it diminishes. 

Ilya can't help himself: he opens his arms to him, an invitation he is sure Asra will refuse. 

But it's astounding. Remarkable, really, after all that has happened between them, how quickly Asra folds, wrapping his arms around Ilya’s back and drawing him close and tight. It takes Ilya a moment—he’s so utterly gobsmacked by the whole thing it takes a minute to register—but then he wraps his arms around Asra, palms smoothing across his shoulders and down his back. Asra’s hand fists in Ilya’s shirt; Ilya holds him close, does not let him go until his sobbing and his trembling ceases.

When Asra pulls away, wiping the tears from his eyes, he favors Ilya with a smile. “I’m glad you came, Ilya. She’ll be really happy to see you.”

 

 

As he leads Ilya up the stairs to the second floor, Asra can’t help think on how curious it all is. Fate twists strangely—though it always has around Aredhel, like Fate herself is cowed by Asra's master, playing by the rules Aredhel dictates. After his fling with Ilya in the card room, he’d been sure that was the last time Ilya would hold him. He’d been just as certain that, had Ilya tried, Asra would have refused him.

The floorboards of the staircase creak under foot. Even four steps from the top of the stair, Asra can hear the groan of the bed frame as Aredhel turns—perhaps in her sleep, perhaps towards the door, anticipating his approach. 

_Looking for me, again. I’m always gone when she wants me._

Asra hasn’t lived here that long. In some ways, a lot of it still feels new to him. He’s still grateful for four walls and a roof against the rain, the security of a place to keep his things where they won’t be stolen. But in other ways it feels familiar. 

Maybe it’s the caution he learned from living on the street, but already he knows all the house’s night-noises. The sound of the bed groaning. Knowing without opening his eyes whether she is still beside him based on the shift of the mattress. How he learned to recognize when Aredhel was coming home by the sound of her feet on the threshold, as unique an identifier as any fingerprint. He knows the puffing sound the hearth makes when it needs another log, and the way it wheezes when the flame is smothering. He can tell the time of day just from the angle of the sunlight falling through the window. The shuddering of the window’s panes in the wind that used to keep him up at night; now, he finds it hard to sleep without the sound.

Asra’s never known that before. The spirit of a house.

It is these things, he thinks, these pleasures that have made him selfish. So reluctant to lose her that he has not allowed her to dictate the terms of her own passing.

_All she wanted was to be with me._

When he reaches the second floor, it isn’t immediately apparent if Aredhel’s awake or not; her back is turned, curled into a tight knot on the bed. But when Asra crosses the door (or, perhaps, when Ilya shuffles in behind him, hunched and small in the face of what he will find) Malak lifts his head from behind his wing, and croaks in greeting from his perch on top of the bookshelves.

It’s a sound that means _love is near,_ a message for his witch-mother, but Asra can understand it too from the endless hours he’s spent watching the raven and his master talk to one another. What’s less clear is who Malak is actually referring to when he speaks. But either way, Aredhel stirs. With a groan (there’s an aching in her bones that set in after the sail and has not left her limbs since) she turns herself over, seeking. 

It pains Asra so, to see her as she is now: red of her eyes swallowing their green; hair plastered to her forehead, damp with sweat; the lines of her face betraying the pain she’s in, even when she tries to deny it. But when she sees Asra standing there—or, sees Ilya, standing behind him—all the pain and the worry melt from her face.

“Asra? …And can that really be Ilya, behind you?”

Asra should not be surprised when Ilya runs to her side—without the faintest hesitation, without a trace of the self-consciousness he’d shown when Asra had caught him and Aredhel on their doorstep—but he is. 

And as he watches Ilya kneel by the bed, and the look on Aredhel’s face—she hasn't looked that happy in days—Asra can't help but feel a little bitter. Not at Ilya. Not at Aredhel, either. Just bitter. 

He wishes things had been different. Didn't matter which way. He wished he'd listened to her, had the strength to stay by her side when she'd needed him. That in the end, before now, he could have loved her the way she had wanted to be loved, with enough strength not to fear letting go of her as greatly as he did. Or, realistically—as he could not really imagine a world in which he'd be capable of that—he wished Ilya had been strong enough to do it instead. To stay beside her, if Asra could not. 

But ahh, what did it matter? He leans against the doorframe, arms loosely crossed. They were both here with her, now. Maybe just in time. 

 

 

In the end, after all his trepidation, Aredhel does not even give Ilya the chance to apologize: she reaches for him as he falls to her side, takes his hand in her own and presses her chapped lips against his palm, smiling groggily at him. When she addresses him her voice is filled with a contented kind of wonder.

“I can’t believe you came.”

Ilya’s fingers fret, feeling the heat of her fever on her forehead, pressing to her pulse beneath her jaw. “Are you alright? Are you in pain, are you… are you frightened?”

“No fear,” she says, tracing his jaw. “Nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a journey. An adventure. And you're here now, so I'm ready. I can go without regrets.” Then her gaze lifts behind him to meet Asra, and her grin widens when she speaks, loud enough for both of them to hear:

“I'm surrounded by the people I love. What more could I ask for, really?”

Ilya must look pitiful, he thinks. Unable to bear the weight of that sentiment, _weak_ , because a look of concern flashes across her face, and she gives his hand a little squeeze, quickly changing the subject.

“You been looking after yourself?” she asks, reaching out to trail her fingertips along his hairline. “Eating enough? Sleeping? I was worried about you, you know. That you wouldn’t take care of yourself, after…”

But her voice trails off, and she simply gives him an apologetic grin. Ilya can’t believe it, though—doesn’t want to. That all the while, while she’s been lying here, getting sicker, she’s been worrying about _him._

“I’ve been good,” Ilya lies, his thumb smoothing over the hand he still holds. “Three meals a day, eight hours of sleep a night. Won’t find a cure, won’t find a way to make you better if I don’t look after myself.”

“I don’t believe you,” she whispers, playfully, fingertips lowering to caress the deep-set, purple bags beneath his eyes. “You look awful. Truly, worse than I do.”

Ilya laughed. “Always. Even on your—” and his throat thickens against the word _deathbed,_ can’t say it— “even as you are now, I could never look as beautiful as you.”

She grins. “That’s a very kind lie, Ilya.”

 _It isn’t_. But he’ll let her have it.

Aredhel lifts her head, turns it towards the window, frowns when she sees the darkness of the sky. “What time is it?”

“Late,” Ilya replies, bowing his head to press a kiss to the back of her hand. “Probably only a few hours until dawn.”

“I _knew_ you weren’t sleeping,” she says with a grin. Briefly, her eyes flick to Asra over Ilya’s shoulder, then adjust to focus back on his. “Will you stay, then? Late as it is?”

Ilya holds her hand a little tighter. “I…” _want to._ But that seemed—he didn’t know. _Too_ much. Like he’d be pushing his luck, overstaying his welcome. He still feels remarkably lucky that Asra didn’t turn him away at the door.  

Aredhel must see his hesitation; she nods behind him, a sharp jutting of her chin, guiding his attention in Asra’s direction. Ilya turns. 

The apprentice is leaning against the door. Ilya’s not sure whether the distance he’s allowed them is out of respect for their privacy, or out of a kind of revulsion, but when Ilya meets the gaze of his purple eyes, they are kind. He nods, _yes_ , a dip of his head that leaves his white curls bouncing.

Ilya turns back to Aredhel with a tentative smile. “I—okay. Yeah. If that’s what you want.”

“I’m sure that’s not all she wants,” Asra says from the door, his voice thick with suspicion, a suggestive sort of accusation in it. Ilya blinks, whirling around to face him again. An incredible, terrible heat he can’t hide is creeping up his neck. But Asra only looks past him, tilting his head to meet Aredhel’s gaze.

“You wanna sleep on the roof, right?”

 _Oh_ , that’s—well. That makes… a little more sense? Barely. But Aredhel’s eyes are shining when they meet Asra’s; she bites her lip, nods enthusiastically. 

Asra lifts himself off the wall, crosses the room at a leisurely pace before coming to Ilya’s side. His hand falls, softly, on Ilya’s shoulder, slides across the blades of his back as he leans down to press a gentle kiss to Aredhel’s temple.

“Okay. We’ll carry the mattress up.”

 

 

After a bit of a fuss, Aredhel allows Ilya to lift her from the bed and carry her to a pile of cushions in the corner. She was, Asra had told him, too weak to keep herself sitting in upright the kitchen chairs. Aredhel had protested, but only for a minute; when he snuck his arm under her knees and pulled her out of the bed, cradling her against his chest, all the fight had gone out of her. Ilya had set her upon the cushions, gently, pressing a kiss to her forehead and shucking off his jacket before he moved help Asra with the mattress.

Asra’s in the corner, reaching for a cord that hangs from the ceiling. It must lead to this highly discussed _roof_ , Ilya realizes. It’s funny, a little, that he never noticed it before, neither the cord nor the wooden hatch it’s attached to. But then again, he supposes, every time he’s been here before he’s been… distracted. More focused on the company than the surroundings he finds himself in. 

With a tug, the cord releases the hatch, and down slides a precarious-looking ladder. 

“Come on,” Asra says, beckoning Ilya back towards the bed. “We’ll bring the pillows and blankets up first.”

Underfoot, the ladder rungs are sturdier than they look; that’s good, given that—if Aredhel’s as weak as Asra says—there’s a fair chance that Ilya will have to carry her up them later, slung over his back. _Sleep on the roof. What an idea._ But the thought is warm, and fond. 

But when he pulls himself through the hatch and out into the night air, he realizes immediately why she wanted to.

It’s not a roof, it’s a _garden_. Yes, the landing is the upper reach of the house below, but it looks nothing like the shingled envelopes that cover the buildings in his quarter. The roof is covered with planters, beds; from the rich soil grows herbs of every color and variety, and the air is so thick with their fragrance that for a minute, Ilya feels faint. Slipshod trellises line the outer limits of the roof; exotic-looking ivies climb them. In the far corner of the roof—the one set back furthest from the street—there’s even a tree, so tall and sprawling he’s quite frankly not sure how the house can bear the weight of it without collapsing. It is fully in bloom: the small petals of its white flowers are scattered across the planter beds. More shake loose with every passing breeze, fluttering as they fall to the floor. They pepper the dark soil with bright points of light, as the stars above speckle the sky.

Ilya must be staring, dumbstruck; Asra is looking at him coolly, the hint of a smile on his lips. 

“Nice, right?”

Nice indeed. Now sleeping on the roof no longer seems quite so silly; it seems luxuriant. “How on _earth…_ ” Ilya begins, but doesn’t finish. Too many questions to even decide which is the most pressing, what about the sight before him is most incredible, most in need of an explanation.

“Magic,” Asra says, simply, his arms still clutched around the bundle of blankets and pillows he’d carried up. “Powerful magic, too. Aredhel inherited this place from her uncle—he’s the one who set all this up, so he could have fresh herbs for the shop stock.”

“And the tree? Is that… is it some kind of rare, or, I don’t know, enchanted… tree?”

Asra’s lips part, and he turns his gaze to the tree in the corner. The sight of it makes his face fall. “No,” he admits, shoulders sagging. “It’s just a tree.” 

There’s more to that, Ilya suspects, but he does not push. Asra sets the blankets down on the corner of one of the planters, off the damp floor of the roof, then takes the bundle out of Ilya’s arms and does the same. Then they descend through the hatch once more to drag up the mattress.

Getting the mattress onto the roof is less difficult than Ilya had expected; Asra enchants it. It’s not exactly weightless, but it lifts easily, and Ilya does not have to strain too much beneath it as he works with Asra to twist it through the hatch in the ceiling, out into the night.

When Ilya climbs out of the hatch behind it, he and Asra carry the mattress to the far corner, where the tree sprawls. Beneath its bowed and flowered branches there’s a haphazard platform, nailed roughly together out of shipping skids. It’s just the right shape to take the weight of the mattress evenly, keeping it off the ground, away from the moisture still gathered there from the day’s rain. 

They move the sheets, the blankets, and Ilya helps Asra make out the bed. They work quietly, methodically. Ilya’s just thinking to himself what a small miracle it is that it isn’t more awkward when Asra opens his mouth.

Asra’s tucking the first sheet beneath one of the mattress’ corners when he speaks, hands smoothing out the wrinkles, unable to meet Ilya’s eyes with his own. “I’m sorry that I was unkind to you, Ilya.”

Ilya’s eyes flicker to him, but then he turns his gaze back to the mattress. He keeps his hands busy: he’s just tucked the sheet beneath the mattress, but he pulls it out again, pretending to tuck it more tightly. “That’s, uhh,” Ilya manages, unsure of how he’s supposed to respond. Something feels wrong about it, that Asra is the one apologizing to him, after all they’ve been through. After all that Ilya has done. 

“That’s—thank you, Asra. But I think the fault is mine.”

Asra’s hands pause. He places them flat on the top of the mattress and he raises his eyes to look at Ilya, his head quirked curiously. 

“I wanted more,” Ilya concedes, his eyes darting nervously between Asra’s and the edge of the sheet he’s got clutched between his hands. “I kept asking for it, even after you made it clear you had no intention of giving it. What happened, the way you reacted… that was my fault.”

Asra pulls his eyes away, circling around the platform of skids to tuck the next corner beneath the mattress. “Maybe,” he says, thoughtfully. “But I was less compassionate than I should have been. Here, give me a hand,” he said, releasing the sheet and tossing Ilya the other half of a blanket. Ilya takes the corners in his hands, and together they lift it, draping it over the mattress.

“It wasn't that I didn’t find it flattering,” Asra continued, smoothing the blanket over the mattress. “A gentle, good looking man wanted to walk me home. Kept showing up on my doorstep, so obviously interested in me.” 

Ilya hardly dares to look at him; when he meets Asra’s gaze, he’s regarding him with an unexpected wistfulness. “Ilya, if circumstances had been different... it might have been nice. I hope you understand, now that you know about Aredhel—trying to keep her a secret—that if I spurned you, and did so insensitively, it really had nothing to do with you. I had to… discourage you from coming around.”

Ilya’s not sure how to respond to that. It’s an unexpected admission, given the way Asra had spoke to him the last time they’d seen one another. _He isn’t, can’t be saying_ …. But no, that's too much, and this is definitely not the time to start digging up what happened with him and Asra. Or what might have been. 

So “thank you,” Ilya says, simply. “That means a lot.” Because it does. For so long he’d been convinced there was something wrong with him, something unlovable, for Asra to treat him as he had. In all the drama since then, he’d never really put two and two together, that Aredhel might have been part of the reason Asra pushed him away with such decisive coldness.

But then, it occurs to him. Another revelation. “Is that why you... in the card room. When we…. You did it to distract me from what might be upstairs.”

Asra laughed, setting the pillows at the top of the bed, nearest to the trunk of the tree. “Not the only reason, Ilya,” is all he says, and there’s a sultry sort of rumble in his voice that briefly wipes Ilya’s mind blank. But then Asra’s brow furrows, inspecting the bed in front of him. 

“You didn’t bring enough pillows up.”

Asra’s looking at him like he’s thick, like he’s an idiot; it’s so familiar that for a second, in all the weirdness of the night, it’s almost comforting. But Ilya counts the pillows on the bed, and for the life of him, he can’t figure out his mistake. “There’s… there’s two,” he says. One for Aredhel, one for Asra.

Asra hesitates before answering; Ilya can’t help but feel like he’s being measured. “There’s room for you, too,” Asra says, slowly. “She asked you— _we_ want you to stay.”

In an instant, Ilya’s certain he’s crimson enough that Asra can make out it, even in the darkness.

“In the bed?” he asks, his voice flat. Aredhel had asked him to stay; Ilya had been sure he’d carry her to the roof and settle, curled, on the cushions still left in the bedroom. He’d be far enough to give Aredhel and Asra the privacy they were entitled to, but close enough to come upstairs if either of them called to him. “You want that? You’re—you’re okay with that?”

“It’s not—not like _that_ ,” Asra says, quickly, but at the hint of color rising in his cheeks, Ilya almost suspects that if Aredhel weren’t so ill, it _might_ be. “But I don't know how long until the end, and when it happens I... I don't want to be alone.” 

Asra takes a deep breath, and when he releases it, his expression softens. He favors Ilya with a patient smile.

“Please. Stay, with us.”

 

 

When Ilya lifts Aredhel onto his back, she is feather light. The plague is wearing her away. She loops her arms around his neck, pressing a grateful kiss behind his ear; she curls her legs around his waist as he carries her, slowly but steadily, out onto the roof.

He carries her to the bed; when he sets her down upon it, Asra’s fluffing a third pillow, and favors Ilya with a knowing smile. Aredhel’s smiling, too, looking at him eagerly. Even though he’s eased her onto the mattress, she hasn’t let go of him; her fingers are tight in his shirt, tugging him into bed beside her.

“Easy, ‘Red,” he reassures her. “Just let me get my shoes off.”

Ilya sits on the edge of the mattress, unbuckling the garters that keep his boots so high on his legs. Behind him, he hears the skids beneath the mattress groan; Asra is climbing into the bed. Aredhel and Asra are whispering to one another. He can’t make out the words, but it sounds affectionate and warm, and for the first time, maybe, this outward display of their closeness does not make him ache. 

He leaves his boots on the ground at the side of the bed and turns over.

Aredhel and Asra are already settled, curled together so snugly there does not appear to be an inch of space between them. Aredhel is turned towards Ilya, eyes hooded, hand outstretched towards him with the palm pointed upwards. Asra’s arm is draped around her waist, and his chin is tucked over her shoulder, regarding Ilya with interest. 

Aredhel beckons him with a single word: “closer.”

Awkwardly he shimmies nearer to the other pair on the bed, only stops his progress when he’s close enough for Aredhel to bury her head beneath his jaw, pressing a chaste kiss to the skin beneath his chin. Her breath is sweet and warm on his neck; her fingers part the deep collar of his shirt, and comb gently through the hairs of his chest.

“Oh, I could just die right now, Asra,” she sighs, content and pleased. “This is such happiness, between the two of you. And the tree, and the stars… it’s enough. I feel… so happy, so full.”

And Ilya does not know which is harder to bear, then: the certainty with which she speaks of her death, or the way her words wreck Asra, who cannot even bring himself to chastise her. Asra’s bottom lip is trembling, biting back a grimace as he smooths the hair back from her forehead and places a lingering kiss to her temple. 

“Maybe not just yet,” Asra suggests. His voice nearly cracks. “Imagine what the dawn will look like. All the plants stretching towards the sun. And how pretty Ilya will look, in the soft pink light. Please,” Asra breathes, his gaze rising to meet Ilya’s, and for what may be the first time, Ilya can see a trace of fear in his eyes.

“Please, don’t go just yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *updated/edited 4/24


	5. Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Later it made sense: after they had made love for the first time, she had curled close to him mischief in her gaze and love in her eyes, toying with his hair when she whispered with a kiss against his throat, I knew you showed up on my roof for a reason. Later, Asra knew her well enough to know that she did not believe in coincidences. 
> 
> But at the time, he could not believe his luck: she reached into the thin air, but when her hands came to the ground in front of him she was holding the Arcana. She had selected a card from the spread and the choice had seemed random, but when she turned it around to face him, the Magician stared back at Asra. Strange though it felt, Asra had the odd sense that the card was looking at him with the same interest that she was.
> 
> “What if,” Aredhel began, slowly, “I taught you how to tell real fortunes?”

By the time Ilya wakes, they have missed the dawn entirely.

The sun has risen in the sky, hot and bright, but the shade of the sprawling hawthorne beneath which they have slept has kept them cool, cloistered from the heat of the morning.

He awakes on his side, facing her; Aredhel is beside him, still. The expression on her face is peaceful, but the paleness of her cheeks puts a dread chill in Ilya’s heart. In the night, she has moved far enough away from him that he can no longer feel her breath—if she yet breathes—upon his cheek, his neck. But Ilya (who is, he reminds himself, a _doctor_ , after all) cannot bring himself to check if she is yet warm, or if she has already grown cold. 

…funny thing, that. He has been surrounded by death since the minute he walked down the gangway of the spice ship that bore him to Vesuvia. He has never been dispassionate about it, but he has steeled himself enough so that each death he witnesses no longer leaves him cracked; he no longer sees each ended life as a personal failure on his part not to work harder, be smarter, craftier. He has seen untold bodies, cold in their meager beds in the Lazaret and in the very city streets. He has watched those empty vessels be burned in pits, or cut apart by doctors not unlike himself, questing for any secret that the illness may have let slip when the spirit leaves its broken shell behind.

But in the face of her death, Ilya is still. If he lies like this—not moving, not touching her—she can be both. Dead and not yet dead. The possibility still nebulous. As soon as he reaches for her, when he finds what he suspects he will find, it will be over.

For good, this time.

No more notes in his pockets. No more rushing through the streets to her side, ready to beg for contrition.

For the first time the terror of the thing gets ahold of him, its cold fingers tightening around his heart. Last night, it had been different. Since the moment he had arrived, it had almost been too surreal to believe: Asra welcoming him with an embrace. The beauty of the impossible garden on the roof. In all of that, the richness of feeling, he had not had room for the agony that seizes him now: the reality that he will lose her. The possibility that it has already happened. 

It paralyzes him. 

Somehow, even though she has been sick from the beginning, he has never really believed that it would come to this. He has lied to himself; he has taken the fervor of her spirit as a sign that she might yet recover, even when the signs of her body breaking down were plain for him to see.

Overhead, Malak squawks. It is a soft sound, not enough to wake the others but loud enough to call attention to himself. When Ilya looks up into the tree and sees him, the terror loosens its grip on him.

Ilya does not know the raven well enough to recognize him by the sound of his voice, but the sight of him is unmistakeable. Mangy and skeletal, feathers patchy, he can be no other bird; he is _hers_. And Ilya… Ilya’s area of expertise (if you can even call it that) is medicine, not magic. But he is fairly certain that if Aredhel had passed in the night, her familiar would not be so mild. If she were gone, the bird would have left them, too, if not by death than by some other way of vanishing; he takes Malak’s presence, and his decision to announce himself as he did, as a reassurance.

Sure enough, when he finally builds up the nerve to reach for her, his fingertips can detect Aredhel’s faint but steady breath when he holds them beneath her nose.

They have lasted out the night. 

Ilya sinks back into the bed with a sigh of relief, pulling his hand back and curling it close to his heart. 

He is the first to wake, he thinks. Aredhel is certainly asleep. Behind her, Asra looks to be the same. But it’s hard to make out. Asra’s arm is still curled tightly around Aredhel’s waist; his face is hidden, buried between her shoulder blades. 

 _They fit together so neatly_ , he thinks, and it sets a stinging pang in his heart. 

It is a selfish thought. Ilya knows it, and he is swift to silently berate himself for entertaining it. Whatever Asra and Aredhel _are_ , however impenetrable their closeness, the likelihood is they will not be so for much longer. The only question then will be what they were; but by then, it will hardly matter. She will already be gone.

And he should not feel the way he does now, like someone has set a slow poison in his gut. _I am surrounded by the people I love_ , she had said, and surely he had been included in that. Loved. 

But Asra is _so close_ to her. Not merely physically, but emotionally. There is a whole world, a history between the two of them that Ilya does not share—that he will never share in, now. Ilya thinks of her passing, and grieves for everything they have not yet had: quiet mornings and groggy whispers, sleepy lovemaking before he rises to bring her coffee in bed, cooking her dinner, taking her dancing. Ilya wants to do these things with her, and he will never have the chance.

(That he, perhaps, did not  _deserve_ the chance to begin with is beside the point.)

Asra’s grief is not his own, for Asra has lived some version of these things already. He has lived together with Aredhel in this shop for at least as long as Ilya’s been in town, probably longer. They have shared in everything. Asra has had a whole life with her, their routines and possessions and fondnesses so intertwined that the lines between what is his and what is hers have blurred. And Asra—Asra cares for her so deeply it has made him more vulnerable than he has ever allowed Ilya to see him. It is _breaking_ him.

And so even if Aredhel loves Ilya, it cannot be like that; what love they have (if it is love at all) is new and green and fragile, and soon it will be smothered before it can bloom.

It’s crazy, he knows it—the kind of thing that both Aredhel and probably Asra too would chastise him for if he speaks it out loud—but he can’t shake the feeling suddenly that he’s bearing witness to something intensely private. That he is _intruding_. It is not that he does not feel welcome; he does. But he feels as though it is for his benefit alone and that, if given the chance, Aredhel and Asra would much prefer to be without him.

Asra wakes with a sharp inhale of breath. 

He rises from behind Aredhel—it is the first time that morning that Ilya has seen his face. His arm lifts from her midriff—he must still feel her warmth against him—and he places his fingers, gently, upon her neck. But Asra is not feeling for a pulse. The apprentice must know, already, that she yet lives; he must be able to feel it in the way she’s lying beside him, or by some skill of magic. Instead of seeking reassurances, or measuring the steadiness of her breath, Asra only caresses her, looking at Aredhel with a relief and a fondness that Ilya feels very distant from, and very much outside of.

Asra leans over her, presses a tender kiss to Aredhel’s cheek. She hardly stirs, but even in her sleep she smiles.

That stinging pain in Ilya’s chest flashes a second time.

Asra raises his head, and meets Ilya’s eyes. Asra nods his head, purposefully jerking it in the opposite corner of the roof. Then he rises, pushing back the blankets and heading across the roof back towards the hatch.

Ilya hesitates before he follows him. He wants to brush a kiss against her cheek; he wants to push her hair from her face. But that seems, suddenly, too audacious. Instead he slides out of bed, and follows Asra back into the house.

On the second floor, Asra’s already busy in the kitchen. The hearth is lit, the kettle hung above it. Asra’s standing at the counter, mortar and pestle in hand, crushing up herbs that by now Ilya can recognize as the primary ingredients of Aredhel’s medicinal regimen. The smell of them has all Ilya’s senses invigorated, slapping away the heavy hand of sleep.

Asra looks up from his work briefly to favor him with a smile. “I can’t believe she’s still sleeping,” he says, grinding his mixture into a paste. “She hasn’t slept that well in days.”

Ilya won’t take credit for that. It probably had just as much to do with the roof, with the scent of the plants and the stars and the moon overhead, and the gentle breeze coming off the sea.

But however much sleep Aredhel has managed, Asra’s got an aura of optimism about him that Ilya does not quite share. Last night, Asra had been so certain she would pass; now, he is down here, and he’s pulled Ilya down with him. “Are you sure she should be alone?” he asks Asra, voice thick with trepidation.

Asra’s smile falters, and he turns his back to Ilya, setting the mortar down as he rummages through the kitchen cabinets. “Faust is up there with her,” he says. “If anything starts to happen, if she gets worse… I’ll know, and we can head up. Here, can you help me?”

Asra turns, holding out a cutting board and a knife. Ilya takes them from him and sets them on the counter, as Asra begins to pass him various brightly-colored fruits for him to slice.

“Thank you for coming, Ilya. That was good for her,” Asra continues, passing Ilya a sweet-smelling citrus. “She’s stronger than she was yesterday. And that’s good, because…”

But Asra’s voice trails off. Ilya’s still slicing the fruit, knife in hand, but he steals a glance at Asra out of the corner of his eye. The apprentice looks troubled; his brow is furrowed, and his hands have clenched a little too tightly around the mortar and pestle.

And Ilya… Ilya wants to reach for him, and has to resist the urge to touch him just as he held himself back from kissing Aredhel on the roof. He wants to wrap his hands around Asra’s and unclench them, press his mouth to Asra’s knuckles until the tension leaves them. But he doesn’t. Whatever happened last night, whatever Asra may have said, or implied… Asra had been a wreck, then, and Ilya does not want to assume that the physical closeness they shared in the darkness will be welcome in the light of day.

So instead, he asks, “Asra, what’s wrong?”

Asra huffs, a hushed but frustrated sound. “I should go back to the palace today, I think."

Ilya puts down the knife at once, right hand flat on the cutting board as he turns to the side to face Asra, face slack, eyes wide, _shocked_. “What are you talking about? Why would you go there?”

Asra only shakes his head, side to side. The motion sets his curls (which have swelled to an impressive fluff in the night’s humidity) bouncing around his face. “I haven’t come by the palace in days,” he continues, voice hardly more than a whisper. “Lucio will be wondering where I am.”

Ilya cannot believe that after everything that has happened, Asra is talking about _Lucio._

“You’ve got to be joking,” he says. “Today of all days, you are going to go see him?”

Asra is silent for a long while, his hands still cupped around the mortar, gazing into the crushed herbs within it. When he does speak, he does so slowly, choosing his words carefully. “…it will be worse, I think, if we’re both not there. You know how he is. He’ll get… petulant, impatient. He’ll take it out on Nadi, or the servants.”

 _Oh_. So that’s what it’s about, then. Asra has tried very hard not to phrase his explanation like an accusation, but the implication is clear: Asra hasn’t come by in days, and he’s only gotten away with it because Ilya has practically taken up residence in the palace, always on hand. And Asra is probably right. As long as one of them is there for Lucio to insult and abuse, the absence of the other is usually tolerated.

Something about it does not sit right with Ilya. They’re standing side by side in the kitchen, but in his mind Ilya can still see Asra curled around Aredhel, their bodies kissed together as though Asra could not bear even the slightest distance between them. 

If there is an outsider here, it is Ilya.

Ilya turns his gaze back to the fruit. He takes the knife in hand, resumes the task of slicing their breakfast fruit, trying to look and speak as casually as possible. “Shouldn’t you be the one to stay?”

Asra stills. 

It’s a loaded question, really. And it’s sneaky, and more than a little unfair; it asks more than the sum of its words.

Asra only dodges. “I don’t know,” he admits, softly. “Maybe. But you’ve been gone. You only just came back, so I figured…”

But Ilya won’t let Asra finish. 

This is about Aredhel. What matters most is what makes her comfortable, and Ilya has felt like an imposter since the minute he woke up. If someone is to stay with her, it should be Asra, not him. Ilya is an accessory, encroaching upon their intimacy. 

He does not deserve, he is convinced, the privilege of being here with her, alone.

So when he gets the urge to reach for Asra the second time, he does not stop himself. He covers Asra’s hand with his own, and the skin beneath Ilya’s pale fingertips is smooth.

“Stay,” Ilya says, quietly, unable to meet Asra’s eyes. “I’ll go.”

The sound of the breath Asra releases is like a landslide. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Ilya says, releasing his hand, returning to the task before him, slicing fruits and trying to act as though he has not just cut out his heart and offered it to Asra still bloody. He knows the weight of what he has done—that this means there is a chance he will not be beside her at the end—and the thought smarts. But better for him to bear it, the weight of being absent at the end, than Asra. 

“I can tell Lucio you’re away, across the desert, looking for… magical herbs, or something. It makes more sense for me to be at the palace, anyway. I’ve been shut up in the library for days—it will seem odd if I don’t return now.”

And anyway, if he goes, he can retrieve his research from his desk. There is only a hair of a chance that anything will come of it. But Asra is here, now; perhaps, with a second set of eyes…. 

It is the most fragile of hopes, and Ilya is frightened that if he believes in it too adamantly it will shatter. But it means that his visit to the palace will not be utterly worthless, so it is a good hope to have, even if he can only hold it softly and not cling to it as he wishes to.

He’s so focussed on the fruit, staring at it intently although his mind is a thousand miles away, wondering what fresh, exquisite new sorrow will come from his latest bad decision (one after the other, like dominoes) that he does not notice the apprentice lean towards him, rising onto his toes so that Asra is close enough to press a kiss—chaste, grateful—to the notch of Ilya’s jaw.

“Thank you, Ilya,” he breathes, and his hand comes to rest on Ilya’s shoulder before trailing a light path down his back. “Try not to be gone for too long, though, okay?”

 

 

It's better that he go himself, Ilya thinks. It won't be so bad. These days Lucio is so furious with him for his failure to cure the plague that he never keeps him long, dismissing him as soon as he fills his quota of daily insults. With Asra, he's less eager to dismiss him—more lecherous. No, it's certainly better this way. With any luck he'll be out by mid-afternoon—he’ll make some excuse—and return to the apothecary, his research in hand.

(He has not yet lost hope utterly. If he’s clever enough, fast enough, there’s a chance, still….)

All of those plans go out the window when he arrives at the palace to find Lucio's sickness has worsened: he has the boils, now. 

The severity of this development seems to be lost on the Count, however, since there's only one thing he's talking about as Ilya is frantically ushered into his bedroom by one of the palace servants. There is broken finery everywhere: shattered porcelain, torn silks, spilled wine. All of this is evidence of the Count’s latest fit, and as grim an indication as any of the foulness of his mood. 

“My birthday is in _three days_!” Lucio bellows from his bed. “I cannot, I _will_ not look like some impoverished, miserable leper on my birthday. _Where_ is my physician? Where is Doctor Jules?”

But in a way, Ilya thinks, even this is a kind of luck, for it is a question to which he already knows the answer. It takes him awhile to convince Lucio to excuse him—he takes quite the verbal beating first—but once Ilya slips out and down to the kitchen, it is only a short time before he returns, Aredhel’s tea in hand.

_Rosehips. Snow root. Some other hocus pocus._

It is a comfort that Ilya is sure the Count does not deserve, but it will get him off Ilya’s back. The pain of the boils will ease; by dawn tomorrow, they will have begun to recede. If Lucio is good, if he sticks to the regiment, they very well might be clear by his birthday.

Ilya explains all of this to Lucio, using his most patient and reassuring voice. But Lucio is having none of it.

“Have you given up, Doctor Jules?” Lucio sneers, turning his nose up at the scent of the curative in his cup. “Folk remedies—superstitious nonsense. This was your idea, I take it—couldn't have been Valdemar's. And it tastes like horseshit. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to poison me, but honestly Jules, I don’t think you have the balls.” 

The cup crashes against the wall, and the porcelain shatters; the tea begins to deepen the perpetual stain on the finely woven carpet, the one the servants can no longer scrub out for the amount of times Lucio has thrown something at that exact spot.

That is when Ilya’s patience with Lucio breaks.

Cuts to his own dignity, Ilya could stand. But Lucio had not really insulted him—he had insulted Aredhel. And _she was dying,_ and Ilya knew then the bitterness of his foolishness; he should be _with her_ , her and Asra and not here, where his attempts to ease Lucio’s suffering were only being met with disdain and contempt. As the tea stains the carpet, Ilya’s blood begins to boil.

And so the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them:

“It is not nonsense, you ferret-faced cretin!” And he sets the pot of tea and the serving tray down on Lucio’s bedside table with a loud clatter. “It works, I have seen it work. So drink it or don’t; you can’t possibly get any more vile than you already are, and if you perish at least we will all finally be spared your company.”

In the wake of his outburst the room goes silent; even the servants are holding their breath. 

Ilya, though, is breathing heavily; he is ready for whatever retort or low-blow insult Lucio will wind towards him next. But Lucio has gone quiet, too, and he’s watching Ilya with an interest that seems a little too keen.

And then, Ilya pales—in the second before Lucio finally speaks, he realizes what he has done. The horror of it must show plainly on his face, because Lucio smiles his sweetest smile, a predator who has cornered its prey.

“Oh, Jules. How could you possibly know that awful tea works?”

Ilya wants to be strong. Wants to be firm and convincing and shake off the damnable suspicion that Lucio is regarding him with. But when he speaks, his voice is unsteady. He stammers. 

“Now, see here, Lucio. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re implying—”

“You are not a superstitious man, Jules.” Lucio is still smiling, wagging a finger at Ilya as though he is no more than an incorrigible child. “Not knowledgeable or interested in the arcane. And this,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the tea staining the carpet, "this is definitely not the kind of thing the Quaestor would be encouraging. So who was it?" Lucio asks, and his voice is soft, cloying. “Who has introduced this tea to you? Was it your friends in that shithole ghetto you choose to live in, spurning the hospitality of the palace? Or is it someone else?” 

“I haven’t been treating anyone else, Lucio. But I’m in touch with other—other physicians, throughout the city—”

“Mmm, I don’t think so,” Lucio says, shaking his head. “Here I was thinking you were sneaking off to get fucked by that useless witch—ahh.” And Ilya swears, this is the giddiest—and frankly the most frightening—that Lucio has looked in months, eyes red, white teeth gleaming as he grins like a cat with a mouse. “That is where you've been sneaking off to, isn't it? To Asra’s. That would explain the bullshit with the tea. Has he got a secret? Is that why he has been so scarce?”

Ilya has talked himself out of worse situations than this; all he has to do, he reassures himself, is remain calm. “I’ve been working all week, Lucio. I haven’t been sneaking off anywhere.” 

It was hardly a lie; up until last night, that was pretty much true.

"Oh, but that is not what Valdemar tells me, and the Quaestor has no reason to lie." Lucio shakes his head, clicks his teeth. "I'm told you're inclined to all sorts of mysterious, prolonged absences. Missed autopsies, shifts at the Lazaret... such tedious details. As long as you were here when I needed you, I didn't give a shit."

“But you were not here this morning,” Lucio asserts, and then his smile is gone, replaced with a sneer. The change is like a dark cloud passing over the sun, and Ilya knows that Lucio’s fury is coming with the same sureness that he knows thunder follows lightning. "And that—that tests my patience."

His arm—the one original he’s got left—shoves the nightstand at his bedside, and it upsets, meets the floor with a bang that makes Ilya flinch in surprise.

“What part of ‘ _personal physician_ ’ do you not understand, Jules?” he shrieks, fisting his hands and pounding the mattress on either side of his legs. “You are here because I brought you here. Not because you earned it, or deserved it, but because the Count of this city has permitted it. But you are disposable, Ilya. And everything you come here for: the books, the library, the fancy medical instruments, the stipends for what is frankly an unholy number of leeches—all of that can go away in an instant.”

Ilya swallows. Lucio does not know the emptiness of his threat; soon, the promise of medical texts and stipends for rare specimens will no longer hold any sway over Ilya. It will be too late. It will no longer matter. But he nods his head anyway, diverts his eyes to the ground deferentially when he says, “Yes, Count Lucio.”

He knows Lucio well enough to know he is lucky: if Lucio still had the strength to stand on his own, he'd have his hands around Ilya's throat.

“Ahh, Jules,” Lucio's lips tug sideways into a leer. “Always so contrite.”

Then the Count sighs—contented, it seemed, by the fear he has successfully inspired—and pushes his pale hair out of his face, tidying it after his fit. It is for Ilya's benefit: he wants the doctor to see just how gentle he looks.  

“Jules. My old friend.” 

Lucio cannot even speak the word convincingly—he hesitates ever so slightly. _Friend._ If they are friends, than the grand sum of their friendship is years worth of condescension as payment for one lost arm.

Lucio pats his mattress, just beside his thigh. “Come. Sit.” And Ilya knows it would be more trouble than it is worth to refuse him. 

The servants are hardly bothering to maintain the appearance of cleaning; they watch Ilya as he crosses the room. They go through the motions of sweeping or scrubbing, but accomplish nothing. 

Lucio knows. He sees it. And he is always more inclined to indulge his taste for theatrics when there are others around to witness. Usually, when Lucio makes such a show of his scheming, Ilya finds it amusing—even a little pitiful. But today the knowing leer on Lucio’s face fills Ilya with dread. Helpless and sick though he may be, the Count is aware of his power, and Lucio has never hesitated to use his office to inflict cruelty on others.

Stiffly, Ilya lowers himself to the bed at Lucio’s side. Though his hands are folded tightly in his lap, that does not stop Lucio from reaching for them, wrenching one of them free so he can hold it. But there is no tenderness in the touch, only the beginning of a threat, and Lucio’s skin is damp and clammy with plague-fever.

He begins with his sagest tone of voice. “It is fortunate for you, Jules, that I am a compassionate man. A merciful Count.”

The absurdity of that statement might have prompted Ilya to laugh under different circumstances, but he is too terrified to do anything but stare, wondering exactly how Lucio is about to express this so-called 'compassion' he claims to possess. 

“Though you have disappointed me terribly, I will not kill whoever it is you have been seeing—treating—outside the walls of this castle.” He squeezes Ilya’s hand, too tightly to be comfortable; in the quiet of the room, Ilya can hear one of his knuckles pop under the pressure. “It must be an important project, dear to your heart, for you to have risked the wrath of both Quaestor and Count by pursuing it."

Lucio adopts a look—it is so unnatural it must be forced—that Ilya might have described as 'somber' or 'remorseful' on anyone else, but the arrogant tilt of Lucio's chin makes him skeptical the sentiment is real. 

“But I cannot allow you to keep making these lengthy trips into town—it is impractical, isn’t it? And it interrupts your work with Quaestor Valdemar.” His tone turns too saccharine, steeped in a sweetness that is not becoming on him when he leans forward, lowering his voice. “Tell me where they are, this patient of yours, and I will have them brought to the Lazaret.”

The terror… is so real, so big. It feels wider than the sky, more present than the air—which, coincidently, Ilya feels he has absolutely _none_ of left in his lungs. He is hardly looking at Lucio, now; no, he is bargaining, pleading, caught in the thrall of an anxiety that will not leave him until he returns to the Apothecary and finds her safe. ( _If_ he—)

Lucio's mask breaks: he chuckles, and when he smiles it is nothing if not smug, self-satisfied, pleased with the reaction he's getting from the doctor. He is a predator with his prey cornered; he is engaging in play before he goes in for the kill. Lucio shrugs. 

"Who knows? Perhaps the Quaestor will select your patient for his study, and then you can keep treating them with the same compassionate care you give to all of our guests in the laboratory."

And that—that threat—that is enough to bring Ilya back to his body, out of the nightmare (of what will or will not come to pass) to lie. Gods, he lies so often, he really should be better at it by now. Ilya keeps his voice steady when he speaks, but his pulse is racing. Lucio is gripping his hand so tightly, Ilya fears Lucio can feel the frantic pace of his heart beneath his fingertips.

"There is no one, Count Lucio, I swear it."

“Hmm.” Lucio tilts his head coyly, his eyes narrowing. “Promises are cheap, Doctor Jules. But the truth will come out, one way or another.” Lucio releases Ilya’s hand, pats it roughly and jerks his head towards the door in dismissal.

"Get out. And have the servants in the kitchen bring me more of that tea.”

Ilya rises from the bed, turns to leave; he keeps his gait measured, and it is by force of sheer will alone that he does not sprint out of the room. 

Lucio is onto him. He is too close to the truth; he has probably guessed it already, and there will no doubt be repercussions. If there is anything Lucio cannot abide it is _sharing:_ sharing resources, sharing glory, sharing attention. That Ilya was not here, at his disposal as soon as the first boil was found—that is a slight the Count is unlikely to let go of.

Walking towards the door, he is already doing the mental math. There are always guards in the market near the apothecary; if Lucio wishes, he can get a messenger to them on horseback. Or worse, falcon. But if Ilya gets out soon, if he runs—

“Oh, and Jules?” 

Ilya stills, turns his head just enough to watch Lucio out of the corner of his eye.

“If you are ever gone again, vanished when I need you,” Lucio says, and his voice is edged with a threat, a hiss in his words, “then I will keep you in the castle by one of the many means available to me. I will lock you in the damned dungeon like a prisoner, where you will have no distractions, and I will at last have the peace of mind that the doctor I have employed to keep me healthy will not be busy getting dicked when I need him.”

Ilya swallows.

“Yes, Count Lucio.”

 

 

But Ilya does not stay. He fears Lucio’s intellect too much to trust that he has not already sent the guards to snoop around; he can only pray that they will search his own apartment first, in the opposite corner of the city. He tries to keep his gait natural as he walks through the palace halls, making his way for the exit as soon as Lucio’s bedchamber door closes behind him. He does not stop by the library to fetch his research.

If he is too late—if Lucio’s guards have already found out what they never should—Ilya will never forgive himself.

Outside, once his feet cross the palace gate, he runs. He runs like his life depends on it. It is not easy going: the city is buzzing with activity. The annual masquerade, after all, is only a few days off, being held despite the rumors of the Count’s illness. Everyone is out in the market, and Ilya nearly collides with not one but _two_ merchant carts and countless shoppers before he clears it, speeding towards the apothecary.

When he arrives, the door to the shop is already open, swaying lazily in the wind.

_No, no, no—_

“Asra? Aredhel?”

Past the threshold, the shop is a mess. One of the display cases has been smashed; shattered glass glitters on the ground, scattered like the artifacts the case once held. There’s a faint, acrid smell to the air. And blood, everywhere. A lot of it. Spilled across the tiles, or smeared on the snapped wood frame of the display case. The hanging lanterns are all askew. Spots on the wall are charred, still smoking with the power of the misaimed hexes that smote them.

“Asra?”

The second floor is covered in ash: the bed frame, the kitchen table, the books and the sink. Everything is covered in a fine layer of grey soot, as though blown out from the hearth by a strong wind. The hanging ladder to the roof has been torn from the hatch, but it’s leaning just against the wall, and once he climbs up, Ilya’s limbs are long enough to reach the opening that leads to the roof.

The roof garden, too, has been decimated. Footprints track through the flowerbeds, plants lie crushed from the weight of too many boots. One of the planters has been destroyed, its soil spilling across one of the walkways, uprooted herbs lying limply on the ground. The trellises, too, have collapsed. Only the hawthorne tree seems unharmed, towering in the corner over the wreckage.

And beneath the tree is Asra, facing its great trunk. He is kneeling, and his back turned. But at the crown of his head, Ilya can see that his typically pristine curls of white hair have been crusted with blood.

 

 

When Albert Mooney rooted the hawthorne tree to the roof, it was already an afterthought, an addition. But when Asra had first laid eyes on it he'd had no idea who Albert Mooney was at all, beyond the fact that his name graced the sign out front. “ _Albert Mooney's Apothecary_.” It almost sounded like it was made up: a fictitious name, chosen to sell more product. 

Not that he’d been worried much about that, then; not the tree, nor how it got there. All those years ago, he’d been concerned about only a few things: how he was going to eat, where he was going to sleep, not getting harassed by the city guards, and Muriel. Those four things were often enough to keep his thoughts occupied from waking until sleeping, wherever he found the shelter to do so.

The night Asra first saw Albert Mooney’s tree, he'd been running. 

The guard had found him crouched in an alley, taking stock of the day's spoils: half a loaf of crusted bread, a few pieces of dried fruit. He had earned them lawfully, through odd jobs for the market vendors, but that did not matter. Asra knew this particular guard quite well, and had recognized the look in his eyes. He was going to kick first, and ask questions only after Asra was hunched over and clutching his gut, breathless enough that he could barely answer. 

So Asra had run, fled from the spot with such urgency he had left his dinner behind. 

He had been young, then. Maybe stronger of build, too. But on that day he had not yet eaten, and so, though he could normally leave the city guard in the dust behind him, Asra had feared that being overtaken was a very real possibility. As he had sped from the alley, crossing the market and winding back into the streets, he had sought some way to evade the guard before the chase reached its conclusion.

He had heard Albert Mooney's tree before he saw it: his ears picked out the sound of the wind tickling its branches. And he had caught sight of the white petals floating down to the cobblestones from above, he had looked up. 

It's green branches had been just barely visible from the street below, peeking over the lip of the roof. 

Asra gauged the height of the wall as the guard’s footsteps clapped around the corner. Probably not more than two stories. Two stories and an attic, tops. And the house was haphazardly constructed, its side full of odd protrusions of stone and brick; it looked like it would have plenty of handholds and footholds. He thanked the inexpert mason who'd made those mistakes. 

Asra wasn’t an expert climber. The city was very flat; he rarely needed to scale anything much higher than a garden wall. But he was light and sure-footed, and the building did not look _too_ tall. If he fell…

If he fell, the guard would catch him, and he’d have bigger problems than the injuries he sustained on the way down.

The wall seemed worth a try. 

Asra had scurried up the side of the building as fast as he could. He did not look down.

Once he had vaulted over the lip of the roof, he could hear the guard cursing on the street below. “Where did that urchin go?" But by now, it seemed, he had found a partner; another voice joined his. 

“You lost him? He got away again?” 

Two guards, then. All the better he'd scurried up the wall.

Yet all thought of the guards (still huffing and scratching their heads on the street below) was swept clean from his mind when he turned and saw Albert Mooney’s garden. 

Asra had never been one for botany, but still it shocked him that there was not a single plant in the garden—flower, vine, fungus or otherwise—that he could put a name to. None of it looks native—most of it looks so wild and exotic that it shouldn't even _grow_ here. And yet it does. Hardy, scrubby looking lichens cling to rocks just beside a luxuriant, flowering fern. A breeze stirs a climbing plant that clings to a precarious trellis; when the wind stirs its blooms, they tinkle like bells. And it is all so overgrown and crowded that for a minute Asra wonders if he really is safer up here than down below with the guards—but then he remembers the tree, and figures that if the roof has not already collapsed beneath that mammoth weight, the weight of his own body probably won't tip the scales. 

Speaking of his own body... he's tired. Exhausted, from that chase with the guards. It's too soon to climb back down. They could still be near by, and if either of them catches him trespassing the beating will be twice as bad as usual. 

And it is clean, up here. Cleaner than most of the places he ends up sleeping, and wherever he does, he usually does not get to see the moon. So he crosses the roof to the tree, and stretches out below it on the ground, which is blanketed in the mayblossoms’ white petals. 

He’d just lay his head down, for a little bit. 

But when sleep takes him it takes hold of him firmly, and “a little bit” becomes the rest of the night. When had Asra blinked into wakefulness the next morning, the sun was full in the sky—and he was no longer alone.

There was a girl on the roof. Not just any girl. Asra recognized her at once from the somber colors of her dress. She was bending over one of the flowerbeds—Asra couldn’t be sure, but it looked like she was humming, gently, to one of the blooms.

She had come by the market a couple of times. Asra saw her sometimes when he set up there, telling ‘fortunes’ for a spare change. From the first time he met her, he could tell just by looking at her that she was a magician—a proper one. Maybe it was the tattoos about her wrist, or the way she carried herself, but he _knew_.

That hadn't stopped her from sitting at his table, asking him for her fortune. Her smile had been kind but Asra hadn't trusted it. Surely if she was a proper magician she had smelled his con from a mile away. His pulse had raced as he took her hands in his and stared at her palms and told her what she surely knew to be lies. 

But she had not revealed his farce. Instead, she had tipped him generously and, upon rising out of her seat, had announced loud enough for the whole market to hear that it was the finest fortune she'd ever been told. 

He had eaten very well, that night.

For a minute, Asra thought perhaps she had not yet seen him. But then he noticed the plate set beside his head, laden with two slices of fragrantly spiced bread, slathered generously with butter. His stomach had growled at the sight of it, loud enough that he was surprised the sound did not attract her attention. He’d sat up, watching her back warily, before reaching for the bread. The taste of the pumpkin loaf—rich and sweet—filled his mouth. Maybe it was the severity of his hunger, but at the time, he had thought it one of the finest things he’d ever tasted.

_I was so young, then._

“Oh. You’re up.”

She was squinting in the sunlight, dusting the dirt off her hands, crossing the roof towards him. Asra’s instinct was to run. He’d been caught trespassing like this a few times before—it did not tend to go well. And even though she’d left him food, he wasn’t certain she wasn’t going to call the guards, or kick him out. She had covered for him in the market, that was true, but his life until then had taught him not to be too trusting. 

Aredhel noticed him stiffen—the way he went all tense, muscles coiled, ready to spring past her and back down to the street—and she raised her hands, gently. 

“It’s okay,” she said, her squint relaxing as she stepped into the shade of the hawthorne tree; it melted into a warm smile. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She came and sat on the ground beside him, cross-legged, looking at him encouragingly. “Go ahead. Eat. It’s for you.”

Asra had only watched her for a moment before he'd stuffed the second piece of the loaf into his mouth. All the while Aredhel watched him with guarded interest. Her gaze was not unkind, but it was thoughtful. Truthfully Asra was too hungry to care. When he had finished the loaf and was picking the crumbs of the plate, she broke the silence. 

“I recognize you,” she said, and her voice was warm. “You’re that boy from the market, aren’t you? The one who tells ‘ _fortunes_.’”

Asra was not sure how to respond to that. The warmth in her voice—he did not really trust that, either. Though it was hard. He very much wanted to. 

He was saved from answering by a shrill bird call; above him, in the tree, a raven was looking at him with interest. 

Her eyes moved to the tree. “Oh, don't mind him. He's a friend.”

Asra looked at the raven one more time, before turning back to Aredhel, his expression controlled and blank. “Aren’t you gong to ask me why I’m on your roof?”

“I think I can well enough guess.” A note of amusement in her tone. 

And what happened next had floored him, surprised him. Later it made sense: after they had made love for the first time, she had curled close to him mischief in her gaze and love in her eyes, toying with his hair when she whispered with a kiss against his throat, _I knew you showed up on my roof for a reason_. Later, Asra knew her well enough to know that she did not believe in coincidences. 

But at the time, he could not believe his luck: she reached into the thin air, but when her hands came to the ground in front of him she was holding the Arcana. She had selected a card from the spread and the choice had seemed random, but when she turned it around to face him, the Magician stared back at Asra. Strange though it felt, Asra had the odd sense that the card was looking at him with the same interest that she was.

“What if,” Aredhel began, slowly, “I taught you how to tell _real_ fortunes?”

 

 

 _What will you get out of it?_ He had asked her, expecting the magician’s offer to come with some caveat or clause, some hidden price, like in the stories. But she had only shrugged, and said she had the time, that she’d been thinking of taking on an apprentice for awhile.

He had taken to it at once. Started by helping her in the garden. She taught him how to identify the plants and best make use of their curative properties while they worked. In exchange, in the evenings, she taught him the cards. Sometimes, when their practice went late into the night, she'd bring her cushions downstairs and let him sleep in the card room. 

Every time he decided to stay, he swore she’d added another cushion to her collection, even plusher and more colorful than the last. 

It had been a little inevitable, that he would come to love her. 

It was not until he came to know her that he realized the reason she had asked him was because she was lonely. By then—by the time they had met properly—Albert Mooney was already dead. 

 

 

Asra does not think the house is haunted. Aredhel jokes about it, sometimes, when things go bang in the night. _It’s Uncle Albert’s ghost_ , she says, though she believes in no such thing. He has lived here for awhile, and he is pretty sure that Albert’s malevolent spirit is not watching him, waiting for the opportunity to cause mischief. If he is, he's terribly benign, despite the fact that Aredhel hardly ever refers to him as anything other than “ _that horrid old warlock_.” 

Though by now, Asra knows that there was a time when Aredhel was quite fond of him; long before Asra had shown up, her uncle had been like a father to her. 

Despite that fondness, Albert Mooney has no reason to stay behind, Asra thinks. In the otherworld of death he may have found what he had always sought until death had claimed him. 

But for the first time, sitting under the tree, with Aredhel gone—he almost thinks he can hear the bookish old man laughing at him.

And maybe he can. Albert Mooney built the house from the ground up; the shop still bears his name. _Albert Mooney’s Apothecary_. Albert picked the tiles that cover the floor of the shop; Albert laid the first layer of protective magic that still keeps the shop safe from. His magic keeps the ceiling on the second floor from sagging under the weight of the garden above, planted so that Albert could grow his own wares, cut out the middleman from his business and make his curatives more affordable for the city’s poor.

It was Alberts sloppy masonry, held together with more magic than mortar, that had allowed Asra to scale the building wall. And it was Albert Mooney who planted the hawthorne tree, whose petal’d weeping had drawn Asra up here for the very first time, and beneath which Asra now sits.

Like the other plants in the roof garden, the tree is not native to the city. It’s mother tree is far away in the green lands where Albert and Brona first met. Their lives had collided on another shore, rockier and colder than the coast of Vesuvia. There, Albert had courted Brona beneath a grove of hawthorne trees; when he first kissed her, Brona had their petals clinging in her dark hair. 

 _Only mischief can come of it_ , the locals had said. For hawthorne trees were as beautiful as they were ominous, and popular legend said they were gateways to the otherworld. But Albert paid their whispering no mind, for he was in love, and he was a magician, and he was proud; faerie-stories would have no hold on him.

When Brona got sick—when she'd been sick for awhile—Albert had planted the hawthorne tree on the roof for her to enjoy, as an apology for not being near. 

Because he was never near, even after Brona’s sickness worsened. Albert loved her too dearly, _needed_ her; he refused to believe the inevitable conclusion of her worsening illness. He was always away, searching for holy balsam from across the desert or pure cleansing waters from a sacred fountain. And yet none of these cured his wife, no matter the distance Albert traveled. 

 _Stay with me_ , Brona had begged him, between his journeys. _Please stay with me, do not leave my side._

But Albert had always left. 

Aredhel had been living with the couple for years, by then. They had become like parents to her; her own father had foisted her into Albert’s care once her magic had turned her into too much of a handful. _That's your family business, not mine, Albert,_ he had written in the note, and he had sent a Aredhel to Vesuvia to live with them. And though Albert and Brona had little warning, they took in their niece, for after all, she was the daughter of Albert’s sister. 

And Albert grew fond of Aredhel, despite everything, her mischief and troublemaking; he enjoyed having an apprentice. Albert and Brona were kind to her. They taught her to channel her magic into something more productive than pranks. Albert taught her about things that grow, and how to use them best to help the sick; Brona taught her how to run the shop. Under their parentage, she had grown from a troublesome, gangly youth into an independent, brazen young woman.

Albert Mooney had been a good man, once, before Brona’s illness had turned him desperate. 

But once Albert was gone, seeking darker and fouler forms of magic to deliver his wife, Aredhel had remained behind and watched her aunt slowly die. 

Aredhel had always said, _Right up until her dying breath, Brona believed she'd see him again. That he'd know somehow that she needed him, that he'd make it back in time._

_And of course, he didn't. I always hated him for that._

Brona's death stole away Albert’s warmth and turned him cold. Increasingly Aredhel needed to run the day to day operations of the shop, as Albert turned to darker and more forbidden tomes, seeking a feasible path to the feat of necromancy he sought to accomplish. Aredhel watched his obsession wither him away until he was bitter and frail. He died before he found his answers, and left Aredhel alone, but for the company of her familiar. 

It was difficult for her, then. She had never lived alone before, and now she had inherited the family business. The responsibility she felt kept her busy, for however bitterly things had ended between her and her uncle, she had loved the shop. Aredhel told herself that it was for the sake of those good memories—what she had to cling to in her loneliness—that she kept the shop in good order, though it meant she had little time to spend with others. In truth it was probably because she had no where else to go.

Three years later, Asra crept onto her roof and took a nap beneath Albert Mooney’s hawthorne tree. 

 

 

Asra has failed Aredhel doubly, now. _Stay with me_ , she had begged him after she had caught the plague, and she had told Asra why those words bore such weight. But when the palace had put out the open call for researchers, Asra could not possibly refuse the invitation. They had a stunning wealth of books in the apartment thanks to Albert (though Asra was convinced some of his books on dark magic had gone mysteriously missing since he had moved in) but that did not come close to the untold resources of the palace. Asra had been stubborn, and frightened, and proud; he had thought he would find something that would make the difference. 

And he had been so, _so_ close...

But he had not succeeded. And so he had left her alone for all of this time for nothing. 

And now, his second promise broken: she was gone. On the roof they had not heard the jangle of the bells, nor the shout of the first guard when the ward broke upon him and ripped his hand cleanly from his arm. Asra did not hear them until they were already on the second floor, and by then it was too late. 

There were four of them, and they fell upon Asra first. A blow to the back of his head felled him. His knees had buckled beneath him; he’d blacked out before they had even carried her off the roof. 

When he came to, it was clear from the state of the house that she had fought them the whole way out, but it had not been enough—and now she was gone. 

And then the house had seemed too small for his grief, too small to breath in. So he had headed to the roof. To the openness of the sky, and the shade of the tree. 

 

 

When Ilya finds Asra, he is cross-legged under the hawthorne tree. There's blood on his shirt, crusted in his hair, dribbling down his chin from where the guards split his lip with a punch that was better aimed than Asra had thought. But he is not in pain, nor he does not feel it. He only feels far, far away from himself. 

It had almost been over. He had thought the danger had passed. 

“Asra?”

Asra can hear the fear in Ilya’s voice by the way it trembles, but he can't bring himself to face him; he doesn't quite feel like he can move. Soon, he doesn't have to. He can hear Ilya stepping carefully through the maze of planters, then kneeling at his side; he can feel Ilya’s fingers in his hair, searching gingerly, examining the severity of his head wound. 

But that hardly seems to matter. He jerks his head away from Ilya’s touch “She's gone,” he says, and his voice sounds so distant to his ears. It is difficult to believe the voice speaking belongs to him, though he knows the words to be true. “They took her.”

Ilya shuffles around him until he’s kneeling in front of him, until his face is unavoidable in front of Asra’s. When Ilya reaches out and takes Asra’s hands in his own, his gaze is hard, insistent, and leaves no room for compromise.

“Then we will get her back.”

Asra sighs, a soft sound. _He is so determined_. “How are we going to do that, huh?” 

“She has a boat,” Ilya says. “Or knows of one that we can borrow. And I know my way around the Lazaret. We will go at nightfall, and we will bring her back.”

Asra can hardly look at him. He believes him, of course. Believes Ilya has every intention of throwing himself into the path of danger to try and bring Aredhel back, bring her home. 

But Ilya was not here when she was dragged away. Ilya did not hear the ungodly shriek that she made, a sound more full of fury than fear; Ilya did not see the way she had kicked, and clawed, and… and with the magic she had expended, firing off curses and hexes on her way out the shop, Asra’s not sure how much strength she would have left in her, by the time she is ferried across the lagoon.

He will follow Ilya, all the same. They will borrow the fisherman’s boat. They will sneak into the Lazaret. Perhaps the night will even lend them the cover of fog, as it sometimes does in the chill hours after midnight. But Asra fears that when they reach the Lazaret, all that will be left for them to bring back will be an empty vessel, a corpse, a shell already abandoned by the things that made him love her.

But Ilya is looking at him. He’s let go of Asra’s hands, but now, Ilya’s hands are on Asra’s face, framing it gently. And Ilya’s eyes are dark as flint, and look just as liable to start a fire.

“Asra. It's going to be alright,” he promises. “I'm going to make this right, I swear it; we are going to bring her home.”

He is a good man, Asra thinks, idly. Gentle. Stronger than he gives himself credit for. In the end, for all the pain and grief it has caused Asra, it was still good that Aredhel came to love Ilya: if Ilya were not here, Asra would be useless. 

And he gets it, too. How Aredhel came to love him so quickly, and so dearly. Because right now Ilya is his only hope of getting her back, saving her from dying alone and uncared for on the Lazaret. And because of that, and for the first time, Asra loves Ilya a little bit, too. 

Asra winds his fingers in Ilya’s hair, and draws him down into a kiss. 

 

 

 

Asra kisses him—Ilya’s stomach flips unpleasantly in his gut. 

Not because it isn't very nice—it is. One kiss is enough to make him go a little weak kneed and lightheaded. Asra’s mouth is generous and his lips are soft, and when his tongue moves to slip into Ilya’s mouth and taste of him when the kiss takes a turn for the hungrier, Ilya almost lets him. 

But he can't. Because the fact that Aredhel has been carried off to the Lazaret is his fault—and if he does not do something soon, she may be headed someplace even worse.

It has all been his fault, really, mistakes from start to finish. He had crept in to their home like a thief; he had called her a _wonder._ No matter what had come before to lead him onto the waters of the dark lagoon, it was he who had kissed her first. It was his choice, that morning, to fall upon his sword and go to the palace in Asra’s place. And it is Ilya who has broken the promise they have shared, to keep her safe; a promise that (if Ilya is honest with himself) he should have known he was not capable of keeping. 

_Perhaps the Quaestor will select your patient for his study._

The memory sets a pain in his chest that makes it difficult to breathe.

Ilya pulls away, his hand still around Asra's face, his thumb stroking the skin in front of his ear. He breaths heavily, looking at Asra with what he hopes looks like bashfulness, not guilt. 

Asra only smiles at him, far more kindly than he deserves. “Thank you,” Asra breaths against his lips, and the sound of his voice is like worship. 

It makes Ilya feel filthy. But in equal measure it makes it very difficult not to reach for Asra, to pull him into a deeper kiss. Asra’s looking at him like he'd let him. 

The truth is, after Asra finds out why Aredhel happened to be found after all, Asra will never want to kiss him again. Because he _will_ find out: Ilya has every intention of telling him, of being honest, coming clean. Yes, even about Valdemar, and the laboratory below the library; he will lay all his sins bare.

But not—not yet. If he tells Asra now, it will only make him… well, Ilya’s not really sure how Asra will take it. He doesn’t know Asra well enough to rightly guess. But he figures that whatever reaction he has, it will make it a lot harder for them to work together to reach the Lazaret come nightfall, and they absolutely _must_ go tonight.

Ilya will tell him eventually. He cannot bear the weight of the lie, even if he has only told it by omission. And he is certain that, even if they do bring Aredhel back alive, Asra’s trust in him will be broken: he will never forgive Ilya for what he has done. 

And so Ilya knows that if he does not kiss Asra now he will likely never get another chance. 

But that feeling is too big to untangle, not with everything else going on. This is not the time nor the place to indulge in another love, another thing that never was or will be. Remarkably, Ilya reigns in control of himself. He pulls away. 

“Of course, Asra,” he murmurs softly, coming closer so he can wrap an arm around Asra’s shoulders and help to lift him, gently, off the ground. “Come on though. Let’s—we’ve time before nightfall. Let's go clean your hair, alright?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *updated 4/24


	6. Close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He might have returned with her to the boat, measured the nightly swelling of the moon by the depth of their fingernails; he might have smuggled her into the tea house he loved, the one covered in cracked frescoes. Perhaps then his memories of her would not be so colorless and wistful but run the full gamut of hues: the spring green bashfulness of new love, rosy when she laughs at his jokes, and her bright and garish orange obscenities, swallowed by his mouth in back alleys that were small enough for his bravery to fill them, where he might have reached beneath her skirt and beckoned her towards pleasure.  
>  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: dermatillomania, blood

_“What did you want to talk about?” Her words fall on his ears as softly as the starlight kisses the sea, or the first warm winds of summer when they reach Nevivon’s shores. And though she had not looked at him when she asked, still he felt—was—so close to her, her cheek on his shoulder, her hand over his heart._

_(As if she had known, even then, it belonged to her.)_

_She had wrapped herself in magic like a veil; she had not_ looked _sick. Now he thinks of it as a cruel trick, the meanest magic: it had seduced him into thinking of so many fictional, frivolous futures. The time had seemed infinite, saturated with possibility, but Ilya had only seen the ways that things could go wrong—not how they could go right. He had refused to think of how they could have fit together, how to best spend what little time they had left._

_(He might have returned with her to the boat, measured the nightly swelling of the moon by the depth of their fingernails; he might have smuggled her into the tea house he loved, the one covered in cracked frescoes. Perhaps then his memories of her would not be so colorless and wistful but run the full gamut of hues: the spring green bashfulness of new love, rosy when she laughs at his jokes, and her bright and garish orange obscenities, swallowed by his mouth in back alleys that were small enough for his bravery to fill them, where he might have reached beneath her skirt and beckoned her towards pleasure.)_

_He has wasted so much, and the squandering has set a feeling in his stomach like acid._

_But, then! With the stars and the moon and her body kissed against his, he had drowned his doubts. Whispered, “It doesn’t seem to matter, now.”_

_And the boat—the very same boat—had rocked beneath them, its wood cradling them, swaddled by the sea. She had regarded him with a look he now knew, weeks later, to be one of love; her fingertips had traced his throat with reverence, brushed the bones of his collar, light as the footsteps of a honeybee as it crawls into the folds of a flower._

_“Such a surprise, finding you here at the end. I’m not sure I deserve it.”_

 

 

It is that boat—the very same boat—in which Ilya now sits, and it bounces restlessly in the waters of the same cove to which Aredhel had led him. But she is gone, gone across the water (or further, gone to a place where they cannot follow—but _no_ , he cannot even think of it—he recoils from the thought as a bare hand shirks from a hot stove) and in her place is her apprentice. Ilya is not drunk as he was on that night, though he might like to be, if only to take the edge off; his anxiety has him picking furtively at his cuticles, an old habit from the days of the war, when all his idle time was spent waiting for the next (inevitable) fallen soldier who required his medical attention, inferior and inexperienced as that attention was.

And tonight, unlike the resplendent evening that he had so thoughtlessly squandered, the sky is dark.

The lagoon is silent and black. It does not glitter now, as it had then, with the reflections of uncountable, brilliant stars; its surface is but a fitful shadow, for a thick quilt of clouds rolls above it, hiding the light of the night sky. 

In silence, Ilya and Asra untie the skiff, and push the boat off from the dock; they sail without the moon to guide them. Still, they make their way easily enough, for the Lazaret’s shadow crouches blacker than black on the horizon, the sharp lines of its architecture unmistakable. As they leave the dock behind them, a wind whips across the water. It sends a chill down Ilya’s spine, and it carries with it the faintest whiff of the putrid air of the Lazaret: it smells of sickness and decay. 

Asra sits at the stern of the boat. He is dressed in a doctor’s uniform, borrowed from Ilya—they have had to hastily cuff and pin the trousers so that his feet do not trip over the hems. He has not yet pulled on his mask, and in the darkness Ilya can just make out his face. He watches as Asra leans over the back of skiff, and place his palm below the surface of the water. 

The lagoon bubbles, then roils; soon, it is the boat is cutting across the water at a frightfully fast clip—far faster, anyway, than either of them could have rowed. Ilya watches with amazement as the docks recede into the distance, as they round the peninsula with ease and pass out into the open water. The wonders of magic, Ilya thinks, will never cease to amaze him, no matter how much time he spends in the company of its practitioners.

But amazement soon yields to unease: when he catches sight of Asra’s face it is hard, and clenched.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Ilya asks him, shouting to be heard over the roar of the agitated water that propels them towards the island. “You look—is that the best use of your energy?”

For the challenge for crossing the lagoon is surely only the first of many. Ordinarily Ilya can walk the halls of the Lazaret without suspicion—all of the doctors know of him as the Quaestor’s assistant, the Count’s physician—but it is imperative, he thinks, that they not be seen tonight. Though he does not know exactly how, Ilya knows it will be bad for them if they are caught. There is not a doubt in his mind that Lucio will give the matter his personal attention.

(Although he probably has far more to fear from Valdemar than from Lucio.)

But Asra does not even look at Ilya, indifferent to his concern. “A storm is coming,” Asra says, and his mouth is a grim and ugly line. “If we hurry, we might still be able to get her back to the shop before the rain starts.”

Again, Asra has shrugged him off, deflected his care and affection just as easily as he used to, but Ilya is no longer so easily fooled. The lines that are steadily deepening around his mouth and across his brow cannot simply be from the anxiety the two of them share—they are born of more than the uncertainty of what awaits them on the other side of the water. It is the strain, plainly visible, of expending such a force of magic, and sustaining it for so long. _He’s going to exhaust himself_ , Ilya worries, but by now—after the day they have had—he knows better than to push.

 

 

It had taken some convincing, to lead Asra off the roof, to pry him away from the shade of the hawthorn tree in the garden. But after Asra had kissed him, Ilya refused to linger out on the wrecked roof. The kiss had left his stomach in knots, for Ilya knew he did not deserve it; the least he could do as penance for his theft, then, was repay Asra what was owed. He had soothed the apprentice as best he could, then lifted him onto his feet and guided him back to the hatch. 

He had offered to help him wash the blood from his hair, too, and dress his wound, but Asra had refused. In the scant steps between the tree and the hatch Asra had retreated, again, lost in private thoughts that he does not share. Throughout the afternoon, each time Ilya presses him— _are you alright? Can I get you anything?_ —Asra brushes him aside, and each rebuff is more callous than the last.

Asra had been generous enough to welcome Ilya into the shop, into their home, into their bed. Last night, they had curled around Aredhel; they had shared in the warmth of her fever. But Asra will not share his grief. He bears the ache of Aredhel’s absence, and the weight of all his many years of memories, in a stoic, walled silence. Ilya is kept decisively outside of it.

Ilya does not think he has ever seen Asra look this hopeless, this distant, this _wistful_ , and he wants so badly to reassure him. He suspects, however, that Asra will not feel any better until Aredhel has been recovered. But they cannot begin that effort—vain and impetuous though it may be—until night has fallen to conceal their coming, and that is hours away, yet.

And so, with the knot of anxiety in his stomach urging him to _move, do, act_ , Ilya had descended to the ground floor, to the wreckage of the shop. If Asra will not let him share the burden of his grief, Ilya can help in other ways. Cleaning, at least, will keep his hands busy; it will save him from picking at his nail beds.

The shop was a disaster. On his own, Ilya could not put it all right, but still there was plenty he could do with his hands, without the aid of magic. The blood has sat too long on the floor; Ilya scrubs the tiles until their enamel begins to chip, until his shoulders ache, and every trace of the red that stained them has been cleaned way. He is not sure he can do much for the scorch marks on the walls—he knows them to be misfired hexes, and he’s not even sure he should touch them, really—but he makes sure they are no longer smoking, no longer gnawing away at the wood with their smoldering heat. The shattered display case, he cannot repair, but he sweeps the splintered wood and broken glass from the floor all the same.

All the while, Asra’s familiar watches him from above. The snake has coiled herself around one of the beams of the ceiling, and blinks languidly as Ilya works.

There is no trace of the raven. If Asra knows where her familiar has gone, he has not said; Ilya has not seen Malak since the morning.

Later Asra finds Ilya in the bedroom trying ( _failing_ ) to sweep all the fire ash back into the hearth. It has settled over everything: the floorboards, the books, the many _many_ intricately designed baubles—magical instruments, Ilya presumes, for which he has no name.

“Oh,” Asra says, but even in that simple sound his voice carries a note of disorientation. He is in his own home, surrounded by walls he knows so well, and yet still he looks so lost.  His hair is wet, the white ringlets that frame his face still dripping, but with a look of concentration and a wave of his arms the ash starts to migrate back to the hearth, grey motes floating prettily in the air until the room is clear.

Asra takes a seat at the kitchen table, gestures for Ilya to join him. Ilya has swallow the sob that rises in his throat at the gesture: he has only ever sat at this table with _her,_ and this reminder of her absence, more so than the others ( _still life on the table: coffee mugs, threadbare spines of medical texts, bare hands meeting over yellowed drawings. Fleeting touches.The scene of their courtship,_ ) threatens to devour him.

But it does not—he does not allow it. There is only one way to fight back the tide of grief and guilt that threatens to break him: _move, do, act._ So he sits at the table beside Asra, and tells him everything he can recall about the Lazaret—its entrances, its architecture, its patients and pits—and they plan.

However, though Ilya knows it to be a damning omission (and though he has hardly spent a day at the Lazaret without his company) Ilya does not speak a word about Quaestor Valdemar.

 

 

_Once a week, every week, since he had offered his service to the palace and been placed under Valdemar’s supervision, Ilya has accompanied the Quaestor to the Lazaret._

_He had met the Quaestor for the first time on one of these excursions. They had met on the docks, and though the eager heat of early summer was beating down upon them, Ilya could recognize the Quaestor by the heavy robes of rank he wore. But when Ilya had extended his hand and opened his mouth to introduce himself, Valdemar had only nodded his head tersely in greeting, and waved him off with a dismissive, irritated gesture, the way one might swat at a gnat._

_As the Quaestor's servant had rowed them across the lagoon, Ilya and Valdemar hardly spoke. The Quaestor’s eyes were set on the Lazaret, hard and calculating, a twitch in his jaw pulling his mouth in and out of a lopsided leer._

_It is a facial tick, Ilya will later learn, that means he is excited._

_Ilya had been intimidated, and a little offended, but mostly he had been_ so _curious. Lucio’s other courtiers were like caricatures of themselves, with personalities that were aggressive and eccentric as they were unapologetic. They were some of the strangest people Ilya had ever met, and, given the travel he’s done and the places he’s ended up, that meant a_ lot _. But Valdemar—the_ Quaestor _, Ilya thinks, reminding himself to use the man’s formal title—looks perfectly normal. He’s a little on the short side (he must look comically small standing beside Ilya) but he more than makes up for it with a kind of gravity, a way of carrying himself that demands, if not respect, than a certain amount of fear._

_Of course, Ilya could be mistaken. He’s only known this man for all of twenty minutes._

_The Quaestor had caught him staring, eventually. When he turned towards Ilya, catching him in the act, his gaze was absolutely withering. Ilya's shoulders hunched under that look, curling into himself._

_Already, Ilya could tell the Quaestor did not think much of him—that was probably fair. It was no secret that he had landed his job (Court Physician, assistant to the Quaestor) because of his personal history with Lucio. Though Ilya would hesitate to call it nepotism: though he had not yet figured out how, Ilya was sure Lucio had given him this position to punish him. He'd never really forgiven him for the amputation he performed years ago. It makes no difference that it has been pointed out to Lucio many, many times that amputating his arm saved his life._

_But none of this—Lucio, the strained silence, the cutting glances—make Ilya as anxious as what the Quaestor says to him next, the only words they will exchange before they arrive upon the shores of the Lazaret:_

_“There are two things I do not suffer, Jules: fools, and sentimentality. An understanding of medicine makes a man like a God, but still it is a tool that needs to be wielded with precision and care. You must make decisions free of the muddling influence of such base impulses as emotion. If you are wise—if you are of a rational mind—we will get along swimmingly. If you are not…” and here, Valdemar’s jaw had twitched again, a sign that Ilya mistook for displeasure instead of recognizing it as the sadistic and eager anticipation that it was._

_“If you are weak, I fear you will find the coming months deeply, deeply unpleasant.”_

_And that was, uhh,_ ominous _, to say the least. But Ilya had come to Vesuvia to help people. It is why he had left home and went to Prakra to study medicine in the first place. He will not be deterred from that goal, not by Lucio nor any of his goons—even if this particular goon, Valdemar, seems both more capable and more wily than the others._

_But Ilya remains optimistic. They are both men of medicine, aren't they, he and the Quaestor? Though he may be a wrinkly old curmudgeon now, surely (Ilya thinks) Valdemar must have been called to this profession much in the same way that Ilya was. At the Lazaret, Ilya expects, that will bring them together: as they administer to the sick, as they ease their suffering and study their ailments, Ilya will take the Quaestor's guidance, his corrections, and maybe—if he is humble enough, if he is smart enough—he'll earn just a tiny shred of the Quaestor's respect._

_All of which is fairly sound logic. But all those months ago, Ilya had made one grave miscalculation: on the boat, Ilya still believes that he is joining the Quaestor to the Lazaret in order provide medical care._  

 

 

“A storm is coming,” Asra says. “If we hurry, we might still be able to get her back to the shop before the rain starts.” But that can only happen if there is still someone, or something, left to bring back, and Ilya knows that the chances of finding her alive are just as good as the possibility that they will discover that there is naught left of her but ash, smoldering still in one of the Lazaret’s pits.

(His hatred rises like a bile in the back of his throat: he would not put it past Lucio to demand she be burned, whether or not she still breathed when she arrived on the Lazaret’s shores. _If he has done that_ , Ilya thinks, _I will kill him myself, before the plague finishes him._ )

 _A storm is coming_ , Asra says, and the words portend more than an imminent flash of light or crack of thunder, thick summer rain on the face. In any case the warning has come too late: a storm is _here_. Ilya has brought it with him. He has torn through Asra’s life like a tempest, pushing the magician when he should have yielded, invading the sanctity of his domicile, falling in love left and right, falling like rain, always falling. Ilya knows Aredhel well enough by now to know they were not exactly happy, the two of them, before Ilya came. But Ilya knows just as well that whatever the situation may have been then, he has made it worse.

In the very least, he has brought out the worst in Asra. He does not think Asra is by nature jealous, or withdrawn. Asra is certainly not reckless, though he has joined Ilya in a reckless and poorly planned venture; Ilya has _made him_ reckless. Ilya has forced his hand.   
  
Ilya will ruin the two people he has come to care for most dearly since he arrived in this city. He is trouble; he brings trouble and danger to all those around him. It is a lesson he should have learned a long time ago. It is the reason he left his family behind in Nevivon—why he chose to study, instead, in Prakra.

A storm is coming, Asra says, as though he and Aredhel have not been caught in an emotional shitstorm since the minute Ilya walked into their lives. Ilya only hopes that after tonight—however it ends—the dust will begin to settle.

He will make an effort— _again_ , as he always does, as he must when he becomes aware of what a burden he has become to others—to disappear.

But not yet— _move, act, do_ —not while there is still work to be done.

In the boat he is hunched over one of the benches, his knees nearly at his chest. Ilya has pulled off his gloves; he is picking at his cuticles again. In the dark, he cannot see the blood.

For what must be the hundredth time he goes over his best guess of how the Lazaret will be staffed at this hour. There will be a handful of attendants, he knows—nurses who are more wardens than medical assistants—and probably at least one or two doctors. Few of them relish spending the night on the island (for the Lazaret halls are often haunted in the late hours by screams, or sobs, or groans) but there are always one or two doctors call. Ilya can only hope their paths will not cross; by now, after all his visits to the Lazaret with Quaestor Valdemar, the other physicians will know him on sight.

By the time the boat reaches the shore of the Lazaret, he can feel, rather than see, the thin liquid warmth of his blood trickling from his nail beds.

It is soon washed away: he leaps out of the skiff and into the water, pushes the boat up onto the beach so Asra can disembark without wading. But when Asra swings his legs over the side of the boat to stand, he swoons; his magic has carried them all the way here, and try as he might, he cannot conceal his weariness. Ilya catches Asra by his arms, holds him steady. Needs to hold him _still_ , because he’s pushing through his exhaustion, straining against Ilya’s hold towards the walls of the Lazaret.

“Asra, Asra, wait,” Ilya murmurs, his mouth close to Asra’s ear. “The boat…”

The air is thick and moist, and Ilya cannot tell if the wetness upon his face is sea spray or the first heralds of rain. Perhaps if there was more light—but if there was, then Asra would see that the beach is not pale gold, as the beaches of Vesuvia proper, but grey with soot and ash that has flown and settled from the burn pits not far from where they stand. At least they cannot smell them; it has been a few days, Ilya guesses, since they have had a proper burning.  

( _She has not be burned alive, then,_ Ilya thinks. But knowing all the other fates that still may have and still might yet befall Aredhel, the thought brings him small comfort.)

They carry the boat a little further along the shore, and the whole way Ilya can't shake the feeling that someone is watching him. Their footsteps are hardly audible, deadened by the fine sand and the pounding surf, and there is no light to illuminate their coming, but still he is uneasy. As they drag the boat to a small cove, sheltered by trees and shore-brush that hide the skiff from view, he cannot help but turn his eyes warily to the Lazaret, seeking its barred windows for the flicker of a flame.

He finds none. They have come to this shore for a reason; the windows of the doctors’ apartments face the opposite direction.

But still Ilya is possessed of the fear (irrational, he knows) that at any moment, a light will burn in one of the windows; every passing second seems pregnant with the possibility that they will be caught. “Put your mask on,” he tells Asra, as he pulls the straps of his own around his head.

“Wait, wait—” Asra says, reaching out and bringing his fingers around Ilya’s wrist to still him. The dark is yet dark; no light has been shined upon them. But above the roar of the surf, Ilya can hear a rustling, green upon green, of some person or creature approaching from the brush.

Ilya has not lowered the mask from his face; he has not dared even _move._ But when a shadow (tinted red from the plague mask’s lens) crosses his line of sight he drops it from his face, just in time to see a smile break across Asra’s face. 

Even in the dark, his teeth gleam.

“Hello, Malak,” Asra whispers. The apprentice offers the raven his arm, and the mangy bird reaches for it, beating his patchy wings to steady himself against the sea wind. When he lands he lets out a low warble of greeting, just for the two of them—quiet enough not to attract unwanted attention.

At the sight of the bird, Ilya feels his shoulders loosen, some of the tension easing in his body. _She is not yet dead._ If the bird still lives, she has not yet passed; their rescue mission may not be in vain after all.

Asra raises his free hand, scratching the thick black feathers upon Malak’s breast. “Do you know where she is? Will you show us?” 

The raven balloons his throat, lets out a soft _quork_ that Ilya takes as an affirmation. That is good—there are many ‘patients’ here, and if the raven can save them the trouble of checking each of the beds, all the better. But finding her is only half the problem.

“I need to fetch the key ring,” Ilya says. “We won’t be able to get into her room unless it is unlocked.”

Asra looked at him, horror-struck. “They lock them in their rooms? Like prisoners?”

Ilya does not have the heart to tell Asra that the practice is probably among the _least_ cruel practiced on the Lazaret.

 

 

_The Quaestor walks the halls of the Lazaret with a spring in his step. He wears no mask, undeterred by the risk of contagion and the smell both. “I am a man of science,” he had said, striding into the building. “This disease inspires no fear in me.”_

_But honestly, in Ilya’s estimation, the risk of disease is less heinous the offensive smell of the place. The odor is pungent: the air is thick with the filth of unwashed bodies, stale vomit, burnt flesh. God knows what else. Smells that rival even the stench of the battlefields he worked as a field medic. Ilya makes a mental note to refresh the camphor in his mask the next time he comes here, for it is not quite strong enough to block Lazaret's, no matter how he adjusts his mask on his face, trying to tighten its seal._

_Still, even if it is little protection against the smell, the mask serves another purpose: it covers his face. A bit of luck, there. It means that_ _Valdemar cannot see the way Ilya’s eyes widen, or the way his mouth drops open in surprise at the Quaestor’s behavior._

_For the Quaestor is a guarded man, but Ilya is pretty good at reading people, and there’s something in his attitude that’s just… off. Since stepping foot off the boat onto the island he seems to have relaxed, far more comfortable here than he had been on the water. He hands his hat to one of the Lazaret’s physicians to hang, turns to another one with a command:_

_“Deidre, fetch the boy some parchment.”_

_Ilya only has a moment to consider that he is ‘_ the boy _,’ and that it really does not speak well of their future partnership that the Quaestor has already begun to condescend to him, before the Quaestor turns his gaze back to him, staring into the red, glassy eyes of Ilya’s mask._

_“You will take note of the subjects of interest. You will record my observations about their physique and condition, and take note of their room number, so that we may easily retrieve those subjects who will be entered into the trial. You will not speak unless spoken to. Is that understood?”_

_Ilya nods, too quickly, though he understands little. His mask is still new to him, and the beak of it bounces with the gesture, making him look every bit as clownish as the Quaestor probably already thinks he is. He does not comment on the word choice of ‘subjects’ over ‘patients,’ though it has struck him as odd. He does not ask about this 'trial,' which he is only now hearing about for the first time. Perhaps, he thinks, the Quaestor is already formulating a cure?_

_Deidre returns with parchment, ink, and a writing tablet for Ilya, then leads them into the west wing of the Lazaret. All of the wooden cell doors have been thrown open. Ilya thinks that a bit odd—why have doors to keep people in quarantine if you are not going to keep them locked?—until he sneaks a glance inside the first cell, and realizes the cells have been thrown open because there is not a chance any of the occupants are going to make a run for it. The plague has made them too weary, too sore, too sick; most of them cannot even sit upright, never mind stand._

_It is such a sorry sight that it inspires something in Ilya, a renewed commitment to make his partnership with Valdemar work. No matter how awful the Quaestor is, Ilya is here to help these people. Whatever their differences are, Ilya is sure they can put them aside, for the sake of professionalism._

_Of course, almost as soon as the thought has crystallized in his mind, any hope Ilya has of working well with Quaestor Valdemar goes right out the window._

_The Quaestor walks with a predator’s gait: loping strides, shoulders back. He takes the air out of the room. Some of the subjects—_ patients _, Ilya reminds himself—begin to tremble as he approaches them. Ilya gathers this is not his first trip to the Lazaret, but he is at a loss to explain why the people here fear him so. Valdemar is a doctor. Shouldn't they welcome him?_

_All the while, he calls out to Ilya behind him, dictating a running commentary on the Lazaret's unfortunate residents:_

_“Yes, her. Heavens no, not that one. Oh, my—Jules, does not this one bear a striking resemblance to our Consul Valerius? Make certain we do not leave this specimen behind.”_

_“Spirited, aren’t you? We’ll take care of that.”_

_“Give him the capsules. If after a week he still lives, we will return for him at our next collection.”_

_Ilya does not know what these 'capsules' are, or what on earth the Quaestor means when he says 'collection.' But it must mean something to the man Valdemar is currently appraising, because he begins to tremble—then beg._

_“Please, Quaestor Valdemar, please—do not take me away from here, I don't want to die—”_

_But the man's pleas are silence by the audible smack of flesh-on-flesh; Valdemar has backhanded him so hard that the force of the blow has sent the man crumbling to the floor like a used handkerchief, clutching his face, moaning low. He is only given a moment of respite before Valdemar has seized a fistful of his hair, pulled him up by it so that the Quaestor can look him in the eye._

_“You are most certainly going to die," he says, quietly. "But not here. You are destined for greater things—your death will have purpose. You will die in the service of Vesuvius and its Count. It is a noble death. Take comfort in that.”_

_He releases the man's hair, his jaw twitching again. But then he turns to Ilya, and the way Valdemar looks at him is weighted, purposeful._ _Ilya is left with the deeply unsettling feeling that all of this—the manhandling, the cruelty—is a performance for his benefit. Valdemar wants to see how far he can push him. How cruel he can be before Ilya will protest._

_But Ilya is a coward, and Valdemar’s instructions were clear: do not speak unless spoken to. He says nothing. What is there to say? He knows nothing of this trial, this collection. It would be hasty to form any premature judgements._

_His silence does nothing to save him, however. At the end of their search, when Valdemar snatches the parchment from his hand to check his notes, he gives Ilya a nasty scolding in front of all the Lazaret’s doctors for the inscrutable nature of his penmanship._

_Yet all Ilya can think about is the nature of the experiment that Valdemar is recruiting subjects for. He thinks of the man who had begged not to be selected, and a chill runs down his spine. Whatever it is, he will know soon enough, for that is where they are headed next._

_But what experiment, Ilya wonders, could be so terrible that it makes the Lazaret look preferable by comparison?_

 

 

Ilya has told Asra none of this. He has made Asra reckless: Asra is running with Ilya headfirst into a plan he does not wholly understand, to save Aredhel from a fate several magnitudes worse than the one Asra fears. Lucio’s words still taunt him:

_“Perhaps the Quaestor will select your patient for his study.”_

Unlike all those months ago, Ilya knows what that means. He knows Lucio's words for the threat they are, and he knows just as well he cannot allow such a thing to come to pass. 

It is probably true, though, that Aredhel will never be safe again: the guards have found her. Lucio will not let her rest in peace; he will find out, one way or another, that Ilya has stolen her. He will find a way to punish the both of them for their 'disobedience.'

She will not be safe until she is either dead or cured—and this, Ilya knows, is no one’s fault but his. He will have to fix it somehow—he does not yet know how.

But before he need worry about that, he needs to get her out of the Lazaret.

 

 

 

The doors to the cells are locked, but not the doors that lead outside. They are used too frequently to be kept barred: throughout the day doctors and attendants pass through them freely, seeking a breath of fresh air, the scent of the sea in the place of the rotten odor that clings to the Lazaret’s walls no matter how frequently they are washed.

It is an easy matter, then, to slip inside. The halls are empty, and the entry station unattended—the staff are expecting no guests at this hour—so it is equally simple to slip behind the counter and grab one of the key rings.

The halls of the Lazaret are dark and humid, cave-like. Moisture condenses on the walls, and they shine in the torchlight with the same faint light that reflects on the iridescence of Malak’s wings as he leads them through the corridors, around corners, up stairs. Ilya counts: _second, third floor._ On the fourth are the bedrooms of the staff. There are no patient beds up there, nor above them, but the proximity makes Ilya uneasy. As they follow Malak he clutches the key ring, holding tightly so that the individual keys do not jangle against one another.

Finally, at the end of the corridor, Malak stops. His wings flutter as he lands on the floor; he taps the wooden door of one of the holding cells with his beak once, twice.

It is a faint sound, but it is still enough to make Ilya look over his shoulder.

Asra scoops the bird up, off the floor and into his arms, clearing the way for Ilya. But there are _too many goddamned keys_ , and no one has ever really bothered to organize them, or label them. Ilya cannot stop his hands from shaking as he tries the first, then the second. He grits his teeth. They are so close—she is just behind the door— _third key; no, far too small. Fourth key—_ and Ilya cannot stomach the thought of being caught, stopped, now. ( _Fifth_.) Can she hear the keys, he wonders? Has her sickness kept her awake tonight the way it used to in the shop? ( _Sixth._ ) But he hears no movement behind the door. ( _Seventh_.) And through the lenses of his mask the key, the lock, are red, _red_ ….

( _Eighth key._ )

His fingers are clumsy. Asra hisses something at him over his shoulder, but his voice is muffled by his mask; Ilya can’t make out his words. He knows what the apprentice means all the same: _hurry—_

On the ninth key he tries, the door yields.

The holding cell is no different from the others: a chamber pot in the corner, for all manner of bodily expulsions; a small window, hardly larger than the flat of Ilya’s palm, to let in a square of sun; a bench of stone stretched along the wall to serve as a bed. 

But lying upon that bench, eyes closed, skin slick with fever sweat, is Aredhel.

Ilya crosses the room, drops to his knees. There are bloodstains on her dress, her sleeves; a trickle of dried blood crusts along the edge of her brow. Ilya might be worried if he did not have reason to suspect that most of the blood was not her own. As it is, he’s fairly certain that most of it once belonged to the guards who took her here.

Still, there are other reasons for concern: when Ilya places his hand on her shoulder, her flesh is burning as hot as the pits burn outside, when they are fed and fat.

“Aredhel. Aredhel.”

He shakes her body gently, but she does not stir. Behind him, Asra enters the room. He has removed the keys (which Ilya had left, in haste, dangling from the lock) and holds them clenched in his hand. Malak has followed him in; Asra has closed the door behind them. The raven flies across the room to light behind Aredhel’s head. Gently— _lovingly,_ Ilya thinks—the bird takes Aredhel’s ear in his beak, and nibbles.

 _She stirs!_ The breath of relief Ilya releases is heavy and loud and it fogs the lenses of his plague mask with condensation, but even through that cloud he can see Aredhel turn her head against the stone, and begin to blink. Her eyes are unsteady, unfocused, but when they meet Ilya’s she _snarls_ , shoving herself upright, winding back her fist—

“Wait, wait!” Ilya’s hands find his face, hastily pull off his mask before her fist has a chance to connect. “It’s me. It’s me and Asra.”

Her ferocity empties out of her; her posture slumps as it goes. “Ilya!” And his name is a sob torn from her lips, and she reaches for him, hands framing his face, her red eyes searching his like she can’t quite believe it. “Is that really you? Am I dreaming?”

“No, sweet,” he says, gently, and there are tears stinging his eyes. He deserves none of this—not her affection, not her relief, not her gratitude, for he has gotten her into this mess—but he takes it, greedily, dares even to cover one of her hands with his own. “You are not dreaming. We are going to take you home.”

“Thank you,” she breathes, sinking closer towards him. Her eyes rise above his shoulder, find Asra behind him. “Asra, are you hurt? Did the guards—”

But Asra will not hear it: if they are to have words, farewells, he will not have them here. “We should go,” he says, already moving towards the door. “Ilya, can you carry her?”

 

 

She is light, _so_ light in his arms; too light, as though something essential has already departed her body. And once her relief had settled she had collapsed like a house of cards: she has not the strength even to loop her arms around his neck. But Ilya hold her close enough that it does not matter, one arm tucked under her knees, the other tight around her shoulders. Secure.

Her fever burns so hot and bright he is sweating through his waistcoat before they have even reached the stairs.

Asra leads the way, Malak flying beside him. Down, down the first set of stairs, then the second. Asra pauses at every corner, peering around them as inconspicuously as he can (which, with the curved beak of the plague mask on his face, is not very inconspicuous at all) and searching the halls for activity before he waves Ilya onward. 

But they are hasty, careless. Aredhel’s fever makes Ilya’s grip upon her slippery; _maybe, maybe, outside—with the wind, and the threat of rain—she will cool down some._ He wants to speed her from the building, the island. He wants to get her out onto the lagoon. There, at least, upon the water—

_The way she had looked at him, gaze hard as steel and just as likely to cut: “I’m not going to get better, Ilya.” But even then he had refused to believe—_

“Is that Jules? Doctor Jules?”

They are not twenty feet from the door; for a moment, Ilya considers making a run for it. He searches for Asra’s eyes, but he cannot make them out behind the mask. If the apprentice has any more tricks up his sleeve, now would be the time to use them… but Asra is still, and the tension in his posture seems to suggest he's all out of ideas. 

 _Never mind_. Ilya has talked himself out of stickier situations than this.

“And who is that?” he asks, turning around, his voice thick with charm. He squints at the silhouette in the darkness. “Is that Deidre, you old so-and-so? How have you been? It’s been weeks!”

The doctor—Deidre—takes a few steps closer, her lantern-light falling upon Aredhel’s face, washing it in a sickly yellow hue. “Thought you weren’t coming back to the Lazaret, after last time. They still can’t get the stench of your sick out of the vivisection room.” But then she nods, jerking her mask abruptly, its beak pointed squarely at Aredhel, still carried in his arms.

“What are you doing with her?”

“Who? Oh, _her_? Well, I was working late, and it’s the _most_ exciting—I think I may have had a breakthrough! I needed a test subject, and luckily this place is simply _lousy_ with infected—”

Deidre cuts him off. “You're not permitted to transport subjects without the Quaestor.”

Ilya stiffens. Of all the doctors to catch them at this hour, it had to be Deidre. He's not sure Valdemar has anything like a friend, but he's always been chummy with Deidre; privately, Ilya has always believed this is because the two share a similar, sadistic streak. It's that exact sadism that inclines Ilya to believe that Deidre is happy to let him squirm, and that all the justifying he may try to do won't budge her an inch.

“Actually—technically—I'm not permitted to transport subjects  _alone_ ,” he manages, trying his best, despite his anger, to sound jovial. “For, you know. Safety reasons. Just in case the plague victim gets loose, or... something. But I'm not alone. Lorenzo,” he said, turning his body demonstratively towards Asra and favoring Deidre with his most winning smile, “is here to help me.”

But Deidre does not answer. She only regards them thoughtfully, lifting her lantern to get a better look at Asra in the dark. And it is _maddening_ , being unable to see her face beneath her mask; Ilya has no way to gauge whether or not she believes him in the slightest. 

Finally, though, she cocks her hip, planting her free hand on her waist. “This is a sex thing, isn’t it?”

His mouth falls open behind his mask, his eyes wide. _It is most certainly not_ , he wants to tell her.  But it probably does not help his case that, at Deidre’s words, he only clutches Aredhel tighter to his chest.

“Beg—beg pardon?”

“You don’t have to be coy with me, Jules,” Deidre says. “This isn’t the first time I’ve caught one of you perverts sneaking a body—dead or otherwise—out of the Lazaret before it reaches the pits. I’m not naive. Though…” and her voice tapers off, and she turns her head in Asra’s direction, “this is the first time I’ve seen someone having a go at it as a pair.”

 _People have been stealing bodies?_ Ilya had been aware of _many_ abuses occurring at the Lazaret, but not that one. He has to work very hard to keep himself from shuddering—or trembling with rage at the thought of one of his colleagues stealing Aredhel’s body from her bed. But as repulsive as the idea is, it has given them an opening: Deidre is extending her hand for a bribe.

“Make it worth my while with ten gold coins, and I’ll keep quite about it.”

“Only ten?” Ilya asks, trying to sound suave. He’s not sure he’s succeeding. He can hear the tremble in his voice; he can only hope it does not cut through the plague mask. “What if we make it fifteen, and you expunge this one from the log books? Lorenzo, can you—”

Ilya shifts his weight awkwardly, hoisting Aredhel’s body up just enough to give Asra access to his pursestrings, tied to his waist. If it is a bribe Deidre wants, she’ll get it; hell, Ilya will leave all the money in his purse to her if it gets them off the island any faster. Asra hesitates before stepping forward, his fingers working at the knot. Through the mask, Ilya cannot see his face, but by his posture and demeanor alone he knows Asra is looking at him with disapproval.

Asra greases Deidre’s palm with the negotiated coin. “What room was she in?” Deidre asks.

“Block E,” Ilya replies. “End of the hall. You’ll take care of it?”

“It will be like she never came here,” Deidre says, and clink the coins make as they slip into her pocket are as good as a sly wink.

 

 

_“So that’s it, then, I guess?”_

_“…That’s it.”_

_“I think I would like you to take me home, now.”_  

 

 

It is not _quite_ deja vu, the way he feels with Aredhel held in his arms, draped over his lap in the bottom of the boat. The familiarity of it is crueler. It twists, and it cuts, a thorned vine wrapped around his insides. As he holds her close to his chest, sheltering her from the wind as the boat speeds across the lagoon, he is assaulted by feelings of grief, foolishness. He had turned her away; he had, more or less, turned her in. He has been given a gift and he has done naught but _waste_ it. 

The sea spray that kisses Aredhel’s brow does nothing to ease her fever. Oak leaves circle her wrists: she loves those trees best for their strength, and she burns just like them, hotter and brighter in her core, at her center, the heat devouring her from the inside out. 

It is an irrational fear—he is a _doctor_ —but she is a witch: he fears that if he touches her too roughly she will collapse like a spent log on a fire, a carapace of dust blown away by the next sea wind.

Malak follows their path overhead. Asra sits at the stern of the boat; despite Ilya’s nagging, he would not consent to be removed from his post. His hand is once more in the water, speeding them across the lagoon. Ilya had offered to row; Asra had dismissed the suggestion immediately. “ _Just keep her here,_ ” he had said, his gaze hard. “ _If she wakes, keep her talking._ ”

And, roused perhaps by the feisty sound of the water or the way the boat shakes as it darts across the lagoon, wake she does.

“Oh,” she breathes, softly. Her eyes are unfocussed. “Are we—where am I?”

Ilya cannot help himself; he pulls her tighter against him. “Sailing, love,” he tells her, favoring her with a forced smile. He is not sure if the smile is to reassure her or himself. “We’re taking you home, remember? Back to the shop.” 

“Oh, the shop,” she breathes, relaxing against him. “Good.”

But she is too relaxed, her eyes closed; Ilya fears she will drift of again. _Keep her talking._ Desperate for conversation he thinks of the shop and then he laughs, low and proud. “You left the shop in a state of absolute disarray, you know. Utterly wrecked. It’s a good thing I was there to clean up after you.”

“Me?” she asks, innocently, but she opens her eyes just a crack to blink up at him, and her look is sly and knowing.

“Yes, _you,_ ” he grins, and that time, the grin is genuine. “The most horrific blood splatters, shattered glass. Asra was confident you had caused most of the damage yourself. He said that your cross-me-not had torn off a man’s hand.”

Aredhel sighs sweetly, closes her eyes and smiles, fondly holding the memory of the wreckage in her mind’s eye. “Ah, you should've seen him Ilya,” she croons, so proud of her work. “Properly maimed. Good old Albert—that hex reacts to intent, and that guard must have been really fired up to get his fingers blown off.” She hummed against his chest. “I kicked another guard square into the display case. His face will scar, I think.”

“That's my girl,” Ilya says, and he leans down to press a kiss between her eyebrows, just over the bridge of her nose. 

She hums again, contentedly, and raises her hand to his chest, resting it on his waistcoat. But after her fingers find the fabric her grip tightens. Her eyes find his: steady, finally, she looks at him like she can see him. Her thumb strokes his chest over his shirt.

“Ilya… I'm close.”

 _Oh, fuck—_ and he crumbles. He breaks. His composure shatters as thoroughly as the glass of the shop’s display, unable to bear the weight of keeping it together. He has had to be so strong, all day: to leave her side and go to the palace, to face Lucio, to _move_ and _act_ when she had been stolen from the roof. He has had to be strong for Asra, strong enough to get them to the Lazaret to break Aredhel free of it, all the while without losing his goddamned mind or collapsing in despair but this— _I’m close_ —will unmake him, unravel him.

And he knows, it is selfish: he has done what he set out to do. She will not die on that island, and she will not die alone. That is all he has wanted, to save her from the fate she most feared. It is the most he has dared to ask for. But now that she is here, that he is holding her, he wants more: more time, more closeness. But she is leaving. Leaving him, leaving Asra, and his strength is spent. He cannot endure this loss bravely, _oh, god, I cannot, oh, fuck, no—_

“No,” he says aloud, refusing her admission, shaking his head. “Nope.”

Her eyebrow quirks; her lips pull into a weary half-smile. “Nyet?” she asks, and he chokes on his laughter.

“Just—hang on, please, 'Red. We're almost there.”

“It’s okay,” she murmurs softly, and her fingers find his face, and he feels selfish, _twisted_ ; she is passing and she is comforting _him._ Her eyes move to brush the tears from his cheeks before he even realizes that he is crying. “It’s okay. You are with me. You came—you _rescued_ me.”

 _Wouldn’t have had to, it’s my fault you were gone to begin with—_ and then he really is breaking. The words are tumbling past his lips before he can stop them. He suspects Asra cannot hear him, situated as he is at the back of the boat, but he does not care one way or the other. What does Asra matter, now? _You rescued me_ , she is saying, like he is noble or knightly, and he cannot let her die with that fallacy planted in her brain. _You are a good man,_ she had told him, but he is not: he is trouble, he is a coming storm.

“It’s all my fault, Aredhel; when I saw Lucio, I lost my temper, and he _knew_ , he figured it out. That’s what the guards came. It is my fault, and I am sorry, I am _so_ sorry—”

But she is only smiling, winding her fingers in his hair and guiding his head down towards hers (she has not the strength to lift her own) and pressing her lips to his cheek, touches that are so tender and slight he can barely feel them.

“You are so good, Ilya,” she whispers against his ear. “And you have given me far more than you have taken. I will not hold it against you, now, that I had to spend a few hours in that dreadful place. I was not frightened,” she tells him. “I knew you would come for me.”

“I am so sorry,” he’s sobbing, holding her tightly to him and laying his sins at her feet—all of them, now, not just today’s. “I should have worked harder, I was not smart enough to figure it out, I could not find the answer and I have _failed_ you…” Should have worked til he passed out at his desk; should have spent more hours in Valdemar's laboratory; should have stomached more vivisections, vomit or none, on the chance that one of dead held the answer within them like an oyster holds a pearl. So much, now, that he regrets. He’s shuddering, he’s sobbing, and she’s only looking at him kindly, brushing the tears from his cheeks—

A promise he will never get to make good on: “I would have given you everything.”

“Tell me about it,” Aredhel says, stroking his sternum, the cage of bone that imprisons his heart. “The life we would have had. Will you? I want—I’d like to hear you talk about it.”

“ _Stay with me_ ,” he begs her, “and I will give it to you. Whatever you ask of me. I will learn how to garden; I will sing your flowers tall. When you go to the forest to gather I will run the till at the shop and turn my ears at every chime of the bell at the doors, hoping to greet you.” He leans over her, presses his mouth to her brow, whispers to her. “I will rise with you each morning and stay at your side every night, wherever we are; we can stay here or we can leave, start over elsewhere. I will show you… _so many things_ , I will lay you down in golden fields and—”

“And love me?” she asks, delighted.

“We will rumple the grain as I make love to you,” he swears, “and the sky will be blue, and when the trade winds pick up we will go elsewhere: I will show you green rivers and the sharpest, tallest of mountains. I will follow wherever you lead me. I will do nothing unless it should please you. I will lay the world at your feet.”

“Oh, Ilya,” she sighs, and it is the most mournful sound he has ever heard her make, a bittersweet lament for a life not lived. A closed door. A shuttered window. And clutched to him as she is, Ilya does not notice (as he whispers, still, of distant lands and lazy mornings; of honeyed foreign delicacies that melt on the tongue; of _children_ ) as her eyes slowly slip closed.


	7. A Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N:  
> Please note that after book x came out I lost control of myself entirely, and re-edited a bunch of the previous chapters to include mentions of some of the revelations from Julian's route. Some of these are vague, some scenes have been heavily rewritten, and some new scenes have been added. I have no intention of doing this every time canon throws a wrench in my plot, but this time I caved. 
> 
> If you are following this story as it updates, the TLDR for the edits is that Julian was up to some Bad Shit in the laboratory below the library and that Valdemar is a creep.

The rain beats mercilessly against the bedroom window. The clouds broke over them just as they were a block away from the shop… not soon enough, however, for Asra to pretend he has mistaken Ilya’s tears for errant drops of rain.

The end is near—Asra knows it without having to be told, without needing to hear whatever it was that Aredhel told Ilya on the boat that set him sobbing so pitifully. Asra could feel her aura waning then, like the moon turning its face away from the earth, slipping into darkness. But Asra does not cry, not yet. They have done what they set out to do: they have brought her home. And if Ilya wants to sob over a woman he has known for all of a dozen or so evenings, at most—no matter how alluring and charismatic and bright that woman is, as Asra surely knows—that’s his prerogative, and Asra knows that nothing he can do or say will console the doctor. Everyone mourns in their own way, and for as long as he has known Ilya, Asra has known him to be transparent as glass with his emotions.

But now that they have returned home, and Aredhel is lain in the bed, Ilya’s sobbing has subsided. Perhaps, now that the weather has set a more mournful tone for Aredhel’s passing, he no longer feels the need to grieve so audibly.

That has not, however, stopped him from trying to negotiate a way to forestall the inevitable. 

Asra and Julian sit side by side; they have moved the kitchen chairs to the bed. Asra watches Aredhel toss and turn in practiced stillness and silence. Malak rests atop the headboard, his eyes closed, asleep… perhaps he is trying to reach his mistress, to guide her out of the dream which holds her so tightly. She twists in the grip of her fever, and calls out in her sleep, and no matter how Julian tries to shake her and rouse gently her from the nightmare, she does not wake. 

But Asra only watches this—Asra does not stir.

Ilya, by contrast, is restless: when he is not reaching for her he is bouncing his knees, tapping his fingers anxiously on his chin. Though his tears have subsided his eyes are red with the evidence of their spillage. For what must be the hundredth time, Ilya asks him, "Are you sure there is nothing we can do for her?"

Asra is not sure if he is asking if she can yet be saved, or if there is anything they can do to make her more comfortable, but either question can be answered with a simple _no_. 

Perhaps, if he were a better magician, there might be something yet he could do, but he has proved less clever than Aredhel always believed he was. Had he not failed so soundly in his promise to cure her, they would not be in this mess at all. 

 

 

 

( _She had not yet been unconscious when they brought her to the bed: as Ilya had laid her down, she had reached out to Asra, tangling their fingers. “My apprentice,” she had said, and though she had used his title, it was love more than pride that had colored her words. Then followed by concern: “You are so strong, Asra, so talented... that trick with the boat! But you are tuckered out, my darling; even I can see it. Take two spoonfuls of—”_

_“—of powdered lynx claw, in black ginroot tea. I know, Aredhel."_

_She had smiled at him as he finished her sentence, squeezed his hand. "I am so proud of you, Asra. Despite my best efforts I think you will be a great magician after all—far better, anyway, than I."_

_And Asra knows she had not meant those words to cut, had not sharpened them like knives to puncture his soul. But they do. If he was really what she says he is, she would not be dying._ )

 

 

 

Still, as much Ilya’s denial is wearing on him, Asra is glad that the doctor is here. There is a part of him that yet feels tenderly towards him. If Ilya had not planted himself into their lives, had he not shown up with a plan, well... it was better not to dwell on what might have happened then. Asra knows himself; he is rarely kind or wise when he is desperate. 

So he reaches out, slowly. Ilya has folded his hands in his lap; he is picking at the fresh scabs in his nail beds. _He should be kinder to himself_ , Asra thinks. This is not his burden to carry; this is not his fault. He takes Ilya’s hand in his own, folding his fingers gently around Ilya’s, gently prying it away from the abuse he is inflicting on himself. 

He is not jealous of Ilya: he has not begrudged him the words he shared with Aredhel on the boat, whatever they may have been. He is not envious that Ilya has held her, nor is he envious of the kiss he pressed to Aredhel’s brow. It would be useless, now—envy. No, mostly all he feels for Ilya is pity. He knows the doctor well enough to know this must be difficult for him; he knows that, however guilty he himself feels, Ilya is flagellating himself at least twice as hard. 

“No, Ilya,” Asra says, quietly. “There is nothing left to try. The best thing we can do now is be here, with her, like she wanted.”

But Ilya is no longer looking at Aredhel, or Asra, even. His gaze is fixed on their clasped hands. His expression is curious: his jaw set with determination, and his brow knit, though neither gesture hides the tremulous energy in his eyes.

Ilya swallows, shoring up his strength, his bravery.

“That night, in the shop,” he says, slowly. “You cut my hand, you—you took my blood. But the next day, the wound had healed completely. There was not a trace of it at all."

Ilya talks about that night the way the faithful in their temples entreat their gods, as if within the mistakes of that evening there is a seed of divine power that might yet deliver them. 

And he is not wrong—not entirely. Asra does not need to turn over his own palms to see the healed skin, where once a wound had blossomed, split like the skin of an overripe fruit, sympathetic with Ilya’s. In all the blood (or, more likely, in all the sex) Ilya had not noticed it. Asra had drawn out of Ilya all trace of the wound the way he had hoped to draw the sickness like a poison from Aredhel’s body; he had not, however, expected to experience the effects of that injury himself. 

Not quite right, then. That evening had been a failure in many ways. It had certainly complicated everything else that came after. 

But Asra is not given long to brood over his arcane shortcomings: Ilya is still talking. 

“Asra, the next morning I woke up and I was not wounded at all,” he continues, with the fervid excitement. His eyes are wild, imploring, searching Asra’s for any hint or trace of an idea, a last hope. “I do not know what magic you performed but If it's a way to heal, to help—”

Asra is swift to cut him off. “It's not ready,” he says, softly, but he cannot look at Ilya as he does. He cannot watch his face fall. Instead Asra tears his eyes away, looking at Aredhel’s face. “Not finished, not safe. Likely to cause just as much harm as it does good.”

But Ilya will not let go. His thoughtful silence lasts only a moment before he says with far too much seriousness, “Would it cure her?”

That’s the question, isn't it? Theoretically, if Asra is doing what he thinks he is doing, it should. But this disease, it is... different, from other ailments he has studied. There are no guarantees. And Asra had been so preoccupied with eliminating its less desirable side effects that he had never actually tried it out someone who had plague. 

“Perhaps,” he says, slowly, hesitantly; he does not want Ilya getting any crazy ideas, though he suspects at this point Ilya’s head is full of is nothing but crazy ideas. “But there is no way to gauge the cost. The price to be paid for that kind magic would be pretty high, though I don’t know what form it would take.”

Ilya looks away from him, then. Out of the corner of his eye, Asra can see his gaze return to Aredhel, and his left knee beginning to bounce again. He is always like this: if he cannot pace while he thinks, he fidgets. As his free hand begins to tap arrhythmically on his knee, Asra fears what new scheme this fussing portends. 

“Ilya, you should put it out of your head.” Asras voice is gentle as he chastises him; he does not want to hurt him, only persuade him. “I won’t turn to that magic now.”

Ilya wets his lips with his tongue; his brow furrows, the unfurrows. “Could I—” he begins, stops short. “I mean, I am no magician, but is there a way for me to take the risk in your place?”

Asra is soft to him, then. He can't help it. Ilya, always taking on the burdens of others. It is a trait Asra has often found as endearing as it is infuriating. But Ilya’s question is so foolhardy, so self-sacrificing, so tender, that Asra cannot even muster up the energy to scorn him for it. Instead he reaches for him, plants his thumb on Ilya’s chin and turns his head to face him. 

Ilya looks at him, mouth opened, somewhere between surprised and distressed at this fresh contact between them. Asra holds his jaw yet, thumb swiping at the skin below his mouth. His gaze darts nervously between Ilya’s eyes and his mouth as he speaks, softly. 

“She would not want you to,” Asra, quietly. “She loves you—she would not ask that of you. There are too many variables. What if the magic makes you cruel, turns you into someone else completely? Or what if it leaves you incapable of death yourself, turns you into a shade, a wraith? Once I place the magic on you I can’t take it back and there is no telling, Ilya, how much you will suffer on this path. And Aredhel would only hate us both if we bargained for her life by stealing yours.”

Ilya, gentle Ilya, so careless and clumsy with his heart! Ilya only gapes at him, and when he exhales the sound is studded, his body clenched too tight with apprehension to let go of anything, even spent air. “But I…." he begins weakly, then shudders. Asra fears he will start crying again. But as Ilya’s tongue finds his words there is only the sound of the rain beating the windows and the panes thrashing in their frames. The roof groans as the wind sways the hawthorn behemoth above. 

And then Ilya does sob—or heave, it is difficult to tell without the presence of tears—before he meets Asra’s gaze again, and the look in his grey eyes is alone enough to make Asra fear what foolish thing he will say next. 

“Please, I have to help her. It is my fault that she was caught.”

Something cold and sharp tightens around Asra’s ribs: an old dread. And Ilya must miss the warning in Asra’s eyes, because Ilya’s mouth _does not stop moving_ , and as his words come that clawed thing only clenches Asra tighter. 

Ilya doubles over, elbows on knees, hands tugging at his hair. “Asra, that’s not even the half of it; if we had waited to go, she’d be gone in a matter of days. Quaestor Valdemar, he’s been abducting the sick. Beneath the palace, he’s running these tests—Asra, it is so terrible there, and there is so much suffering, and he would have taken her. Lucio was going to tell Valdemar to—”

And Asra ( _bless Asra, and his goodness, and patience_ ) though his stomach is sinking and shrinking and solidifying into something as hard and dense as a bullet—a pearl of betrayal; a diamond of distress—tilts his head to the side in confusion and asks, only, “What are you talking about?”

 

 

 

After Asra had caught Ilya and Aredhel in the shop—after she had gone sailing, of all things—her health had begun to deteriorate. Asra stopped going to the castle; he had not wanted to leave her alone. A part of him blamed himself for her worsening condition. If he had been more available to her, more present in her life, perhaps she would not have felt the need to sneak out.

But now, he was attentive: he crafted her tinctures and teas, he spent the day at her side. Sang to her, sometimes, when she asked. Some of the warmth had returned to the house, and they settled into their old familiar closeness. Or enough of it, anyway, that on one occasion, she did not feel the need to stop herself from wrinkling her nose at him and laughing, teasing:

“I can’t believe, now—hearing what I heard that night, and knowing what I know—that you had no intention of seeing Ilya again after your first hookup.”

Asra stiffens—and, lying side by side as they are, on the bed, he knows Aredhel can feel the change of tension in his body. But he is helpless to hide it.

They have not spoken of Ilya since the night of the sail. He is not sure what to make of the fact that she’s mentioning him now; he supposes she must be missing him. Truthfully, Asra had not given the doctor much thought… it has been some time since he has last run into him. He would think Ilya was purposefully avoiding him, if it had not been the case that Ilya already had a lengthy history of bizarre and mysterious absences.

And that, really, was part of the problem.

Asra releases his breath slowly and reaches for her, cupping her face gently. “If things were different,” Asra says, “if you were not sick. If I did not feel I had to trust him, if I did not feel he was a threat to keeping you safe.”

She tilts her head, her eyes challenging him. “And why do you find him so untrustworthy?”

Asra rolls onto his back, trains his eyes on the ceiling. “Something about him doesn’t feel right, Aredhel. I don’t know what it is. But sometimes, I won’t see him for a few days, and nothing on his desk gets touched—he’ll just vanish—and then when he shows up again it’s like he hasn’t slept, and he’s so _paranoid_. Acting like something terrible happened to him.” Well, more than usual, anyway. “I just feel like he’s not being entirely honest with either of us.”

Aredhel drags herself closer to him, lifts her body up so she can stare into his face. Her fingers find his hair, and her eyes follow them as they comb it, thoughtfully. 

“I trust him,” she says, running her thumb over Asra’s hair line. “I wish… I hope that you will come to trust him, too. It would comfort me, to know that there was someone else you could rely on. I know you have Muriel, but he lives so far. And if something happened with Lucio, after I am gone, I would want there to be someone close, if you needed them.”

Asra had looked at her, skeptical; she had smiled, kindly, reassuring him:

“I know Ilya. You can rely on him, Asra. If you need to.”

And—foolishly—Asra had believed her.

 

 

 

“You lied to me.”

“No,” Ilya asserts, shaking his head. “No, I did not lie—it was never my intention to lie.”

“You lied to me.”

“I was going to tell you,” Ilya insists, reaching out to him; Asra pulls his hands away and cannot hide in time the look of disdain that crosses his face when Ilya tries to touch him. “But if I had told you before we had left for the Lazaret—”

“I would have chased you out of this house,” Asra seethes. “You would not be welcome back.”

“I needed to fix things first,” Ilya implores. “I needed to help return her here, before it was too late. And if I told you, I knew it would only slow us down, and you might refuse my help—please, Asra, try to understand—”

But Asra does understand. He understands that the greatest fear he has had since Ilya set foot in his life has come to pass. Ilya’s love and his clumsiness (and his clumsy love, and occasionally lovely clumsiness) have wounded Aredhel. He has put her in danger, she whom Asra will always love—alive or dead—more than he will ever be capable of loving Ilya. It matters not that Ilya has remedied his mistake. What matters is that now, after months of Aredhel insisting to be kind, and open—to _trust_ —and reminding Asra of the things to love about this man, Asra has circled back to his original conclusion: he looks at Ilya, and a voice inside him hisses, _threat._

All tenderness and compassion has left Asra, now. He is nothing but a cold, white rage. And that rage propels him to his feet. 

He gives one final look at Aredhel, before turning his eyes to Ilya. “We will perform the ritual downstairs.”

Asra turns, fingers dancing over the shelves that crowd the walls, picking out one, two delicate looking instruments. His back is turned: he does not see Ilya’s flabbergasted expression, struck dumb by this abrupt change of opinion and humor. 

Arms laden with instruments (scales and other measuring devices of the arcane) Asra descends the stairs, taking them two at a time; he enters the card room with such haste in his gate that the beaded curtain rattles behind him, beads swinging erratically in his wake, strands tangling around each other. 

He pulls the linens from the table (crushed black velvet, embroidered in gold with stars and crescent moons) and tosses them to the side, exposing the wood tabletop beneath, scored deeply with the lines of runes and sigils. Then he returns to the shop proper, raiding the shelves and display cases, seizing the items he will need: powders, incense, candles; oils to anoint the host; crystals to be laid at the perimeter of the sigil, focusing its energy. 

As he sets the crystals—as he scores the table anew with his knife—he can hear Ilya’s footsteps on the stairs. Not his usual, striding gait—the rhythm betrays a note of hesitation. _Now that he will have what he has asked for, he is uneasy_ , Asra notes. But he has little sympathy for him. Asra knows that, however this ends, Aredhel will forgive Ilya; he knows just as certainly that Aredhel will not forgive him for the magic he is about to invoke. But her aura is but a glimmer, a lighthouse being swallowed in a fog, and Asra no longer cares what the price is. 

Asra attends his tasks. He lights the incense, the candles; when their aroma hits him he can feel himself opening, unfolding, as though a veil has been pulled away, and has revealed such magic. It surrounds him, right at his fingertips, trembling and glimmering in anticipation, waiting with bated breath for a purpose, a use. 

( _And what a use he will put it to!_ )

Ilya parts the beaded curtain meekly, his eyes surveying the tableau. “Is there anything I can do? Er, help with?”

Asra breaths deeply the smell of the candles. “You will heal her,” Asra asserts. “That is enough. That's what counts, right?”

His purple eyes find Ilya’s, and challenge him to change his mind. But Ilya, for all his nervousness, remains firm. 

 

 

 

Later, when Asra reflects on these things—when he is alone—he will recognize the pettiness of his actions. By the time Ilya has made his revelations, Aredhel is already safe, partially to Ilya’s credit. Little harm had been done, beyond the damage to the shop, and Ilya himself had brought the truth of the matter to light—he had been contrite. 

Really, then, what happened next was not about lies, or anger, or jilted lovers. Jealousy—no. Ilya, self-sacrificing (as Asra knew him, by now, to be) had no reservations. Ilya knew the taste of desperation. He wanted to, would give (as he said on that fateful first night in the shop) all of himself if he could, if it would protect someone he had come to care for. Asra had not even had to ask him—Ilya had offered.

And Aredhel for so long had discouraged Asra from this path, though he knew she had walked it herself, or at least wandered aways down it. Aredhel wanted Asra to be something he was not. And all Asra wanted—what Ilya in his current state could be—was an open door. A chance. Permission that he could not grant himself. A breathless voice to say, _yes, yes, call upon those shadowy arts_. 

And the truth is that this is why Aredhel had been reluctant for so long to allow herself to love him: she was Master and he Apprentice; she held the knowledge and distributed it at her whim. He had told her it would not matter. But she has withheld from him schools of magical practice, extracted promises from him that he cannot keep about what he will or will not attempt. She thinks she can control him, stop him from making this sacrifice, what she has called “ _an eternal incision upon your soul_.” But Master or none, alive or dead, she is no longer in a position to stop him (or Ilya) from saving her—by whatever means.

 

 

The rain lashes against the window like the pounding of war drums; Ilya can hear it even when no windows are in sight. IT beasts against the shop like a hail of fists. Ilya thinks of the spice ship that bore him to Vesuvia, and how a storm would toss it. His legs are more unsteady now than they had ever been on the deck of that ship. 

In the skiff, rocked beneath the clouded sky, he had held Aredhel close and said, _"I would have given you everything."_

_"Tell me about it?"_

And so he had. _Keep her talking_ , Asra had told him, So to hold her attention, to keep her from slipping away, he had painted a picture of a life they may have had together. Plans that he had not even known he was making, dreams he had kept secret from even himself had spilled out of his mouth: hiking through the Moonglow Mountains, crossing the glaciers and fjords of Hjallnir, watching the sky light up as it does so far south-even he has not seen the night lights in the sky of Chandalar. But even as he had whispered to Aredhel those visions of fictitious futures, he knew that, whether or not she lived, they would never come to pass.

They were an impossible thing, not because of Aredhel’s mortality but because Ilya knew he did not deserve them. Surely Fate would intervene before he was permitted such happiness—first must come penance. For too long he has been complicit in crimes he can hardly bear to name out loud. And he has lied to Aredhel, not deliberately but by omission: she knows not of the things he has done. The autopsy reports, the books, the Lazaret are naught but smoke and mirrors to hide the darker truth of where he goes when he is not with her. She does not know of blood on his hands—still she thinks him good.

He is not what she thinks he is. The truth is he loved her because he loved what she saw in him—he loved the man he could be with her. A grand deception, the greatest farce, but it is time for it to end. A great red velvet curtain lowering over a stage. 

(Sometimes, he thinks, he has been responsible for more suffering than even Lucio. Perhaps he has not ended quite so many lives as the Count, but the deaths of his subjects are more often slow and gruesome, and the magnitude of suffering he has inflicted—tests stretched over time—is the kind of slow cruelty Lucio's bloodlust and impatience do not often allow for.)

And now she is home, where she ought to always have been. But she had said, _close_ , and now she has sunken into a blackness that is not gentle enough for Ilya to call sleep. And though they have hatched this half-baked plan—Ilya knows just as well as Asra how desperate and crazy it is—he worries there is not much time left to realize it. He watches Asra set the table, silently willing him to move faster, his fingertips picking at loose threads in his trousers.

The anxiety comes only from this, the fear that he may already be too late. That this foul magic may exact a terrible price from him concerns him not. For all the suffering he has inflicted, for all the blood on his hands, for all the hours spent in the dungeon below the library, in that horrible pit, he can do this one good thing: he can save her. 

 _He had put her in danger_! The thought gnaws away at him. His stomach turns at the thought of what Valdemar might have done to her. Might still do—as long as she was sick, there was a chance. 

So he will make her safe—he will do with magic what he was incapable of doing with medicine. Ilya will make her safe, safe as he should have always kept her: safe and far away from him, and all the trouble he seems to cause. 

It will not make up for all that he has done; it will not even begin to chip away at the penance he must do. And perhaps this sacrifice—motivated, as it is, by a fierce and hungry love—is too selfish to count for much. Still he will pay whatever price if it means she might yet be delivered. In this one instance, he will earn her praise: he will lay this one good deed at her feet. He can alleviate the suffering of someone he loves. Possibly he can end the suffering of many. If Aredhel is cured, perhaps he can cure others—Rodya’s brother, and the other sick. 

(Lucio he will leave for last—if he deigns to cure the Count at all.)

“Sit.”

Asra's command pulls him out of his reverie. It's, mm, sudden, like the snapping of a leather band taut. Responding to it, Ilya’s head feels... slower. It is like that night in the shop again, when the atmosphere had been so oppressive it had driven him to his knees. The world feels too weighted, and his knees knock against one another, straining to hold him up against this new gravity. The smoke from the incense and the candles is making him heady and pliant, and he slips into the wooden seat at the card table as much at Asra’s behest as he does for the relief of no longer having to hold himself upright. 

Asra seems to be unaffected by it, beyond looking a little bit agitated, but Ilya assumes that’s probably got more to do with him than the smoke. Faust has draped herself around Asra’s shoulders, hugging the curve of his neck as the apprentice scores a new sigil on the tabletop. His brow furrows as he deepens the cuts in the wood, tracing circles within circles.

But then Asra snaps, and it becomes clear that, while he is surely not pleased with Ilya, Ilya is not the source of his present ire. 

“Well, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch,” he says, sharply, then unwinds the snake from around his neck and sets her on the floor. Faust slithers across the floor, up onto a stool in the corner and settles into a coil, eyes still fixed on Asra, if from a distance. Ilya swears Faust looks like she’s glowering. 

 _Excellent_ , Ilya thinks wryly. _Even the snake thinks this is a terrible idea._ But Faust has not shaken his resolve, not one iota. And if his familiar’s disapproval has given him pause, Asra shows no sign of it. He uncorks a bottle of a dark and viscous substance and coats his fingers with it, before tracing the circumference of the sigil. It bubbles as it meets his carving, and hisses. Purple smoke ascends from the table in a cloud.

“Hold out your hand.”

Ilya obliges, extending his arm before he’s even fully registered Asra’s words. And the world is strange and fraught with magic, and Asra is surely so furious with him, but Ilya’s eyes widen in comic, childish surprise when Asra takes his hand in his tenderly. His grip on Ilya’s wrist is gentle.

In his other hand, he holds the obsidian knife. 

It must be an arcane tool of some sort, not just any knife—it is not the one he used to score the table. The  obsidian of the blade seems to wink at Ilya as the light of the candles flashes along its length. Along the handle are carved many intricate lines, but whether they are merely decoration or serve another purpose, Ilya cannot say.

Asra lowers the blade, digs only the tip of it into the meet of Ilya’s finger.

It is only a prick—barely enough to justify the muffled sound Ilya makes—but it draws blood. And as the blood beads garnet on his fingertip, the air in the room thickens. Presses close. Ilya fights the urge to cough—for the first time he finds it difficult to breath.

Asra is still holding his wrist. Asra turns Ilya’s hand over, pulls it across the table towards the sigil. Then he guides it towards the carving, and traces Ilya’s fingertip around the gouges in the tabletop, smearing the blood along its crevices. Again, the tabletop bubbles, smokes, but this time there are sparks, too. Little pinpricks of excited light, purple and blue, burning brightly before they fade as the blood sinks into the sigil.

“Is that—is that it?” Ilya asks. Every word he speaks is a struggle, forced past his lips, formed with a clumsy tongue.

“That’s all,” Asra says, “for now.”

 

 

 

Neither Ilya nor Asra speaks, and not a sound comes from the floor above, but the house is far from silent. The wind worms its cold fingers through the house’s cracks—strange, it has never before seemed drafty. The walls seem like scant protection against gale as the storm rages. It whistles as it penetrates, hissing beneath the crack in the front door.

Perhaps it is the headiness of the smoke—the miasmic energy twisting through his mind just as it twists through the shop—but to Ilya’s ears, it sounds like whispers. As though Albert Mooney’s ghost and a thousand others are pressing against the thin fabric of the otherworld and gathering around the card room with baited breath in anticipation of whatever doom is about to unfold.

And following the wind: the rain.

It takes Ilya a moment to recognize the sound. The bubble of it. It sounds like a spring, a wild font of water, but it is too close—like it could be right at his feet, or behind him, though he can’t quite place the direction the sound is coming from.

“Asra,” he hisses. “Is the house leaking?”

But Asra is not looking at him. He had painted the table with Ilya’s blood, then closed his eyes. His palms are flat, face-up on the table, holding Ilya’s, and a look of the utmost concentration is on his face. He does not open his eyes to look at Ilya when he responds.

“Albert’s house doesn’t leak, Ilya.”

And well, that’s—that’s all well and good, but the sound of water is getting _louder_. Like—like the rush of a tide on a beach, a liquid rumbling and crashing, and he—if the roof had fallen, caved in, they would have heard, it right? - - Actually, if the roof has caved in, Aredhel might be—oh! he should—but he can barely move, rooted to the spot by Asra’s grip on his hands, even if the grip is gentle. Ilya is pinned. And oh, how the room feels, not spinning but… diminishing? A wave of nausea rocks him, leaves his squeezing his eyes shut and reeling, and then, when it passes—the scent of the beach! Not the Vesuvian lagoon, but somewhere else, far off. Sharp mineral smell of salt mingled with the pleasing sweetness of exotic fruits. Out of nowhere—unbidden—an image rises in Ilya’s mind: a beach awash in starlight. But in his mouth he tastes ash, and—

A yelp, thoroughly undignified. “Why do I—I’m wet!”

Asra’s voice, weary: “Ilya, please… shut up.”

But Ilya will _not_ shut up: either the magic is making him hallucinate or there is a foot of water soaking through the bottom of his trousers but in both cases Asra owes him an explanation. He opens his mouth to protest—

—and then the world bottoms out, swallows him in darkness.

 

 

 

.…it is quieter here… there is no storm, no wind or rain… a tide pushes (a hand on the back) inward and onto feet. beneath them: sand, pink. like guava flesh. and above…? stars, brightly, dancing in milky swirls of far off galaxies, heavens of another world. and the sea spray glows… brightly, too. as the sparks on the table, as in the… … the shop. _hmm._

brightly, too: asra… whom the light does not fall on so much as _flock to_ … drawn to the (he is, is he not?) _exquisite_ lines of his face, which is… …calm. tranquil, and he looks like he has never looked, nothing _apprentice-like_ about him, the genuine article, starlight caught in his hair. drawn into his hair. crowning his head. yes, that, a diadem of starlight… and his purple eyes hold more secrets than the heavens.

oh asra, asra, shining and resplendent, what have we done to you, to make you so fierce?

but I love… have loved… have always loved the shore, and… 

and you.

nice night for a

cutting through the water like a nymph or a spirit, _immense_ but possessed of such grace… 

there was a time when i was younger and it was the first time, the first time the grandmas were going to take me and portia and the other children now that kostya was old enough even though it wasn’t that far but far for them i suppose perhaps it was and it was the first time i had ever been to the beach the shore that all the visitors came from the gateway to the world all that water like one tremendous door and as i remember it now that is when i first believed in god really believed not just afraid-believed but with conviction and awe: the ocean, the sea… swam so far into its depths grandma had to give me a scolding, pulled my ear for putting myself in danger but oh to be surrounded by it the salt in it the floating the way it held me, and even after we left i kept the ocean in me, a precious promise that _one day I would_

one day I would kneel before the ocean on a luminescent shore and beg contrition in front of a magician, like the believers in their temples

as adequate as any god: he reaches up and plucks something bright out of the heavens a bead of silver on his fingertip when he lowers it shining like mercury

presses the finger into the knot of my throat, the crossroads where clavicle meets sternum meets— _OH, like a wellspring!_ a doorknob! starlight spiderwebbing out across the column of my throat, star fire in my belly when I swallow, bright brightbright _brightly,_

the taste in my mouth like a spent hearth.

 

 

When Ilya comes to, he’s face down on the table. His cheek is wet, though not from seaspray or rain—he’s lying in a puddle of his own spit. He is alone, and it is quiet—the storm has stopped.

Or, not quite alone—as he raises his head, wiping his cheek dry with the heel of his hand, he can see Faust coiled on the other side of the table, watching him. Her head lifts a little as he stirs, and her tongue darts out of her mouth. 

_Well, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch._

Suddenly, Ilya doesn’t like the way Faust is looking at him. He remembers Asra’s warning—the caution of a _terrible price_ —and he sits up, running his hands through his hair, along his chest, his face. Everything, hmm. _Feels_ at rights. He’s got all four limbs, and as far as his fingers can tell, he’s free of any deformity. Not that he supposes flesh is the only currency of these kinds of bargains. Still, he’s got each of his ears, both eyes—all things considered, he seems to have come out of it pretty well, though his memory of how _‘it’_ went are a little hazy. He’s not sure what kind of nonsense hocus-pocus Asra had been burning, but the only explanation Ilya can think of for what little he remembers is that he was hallucinating, vividly.

There’s one more place to check—his fingertips fall to his jaw, trace the lines of his throat, searching. But the flesh there seems no different than usual. It is not tender to the touch, and there is no roughness of a healing scab, or the raised skin of a scar. 

“You won’t be able to feel the mark.”

Asra’s voice, behind him. Ilya turns. He’s standing behind the beaded curtain, a glass of water in hand, looking at Ilya with an unreadable expression.

“It will reveal itself when you use the magic, but other than that, you won’t even know it’s there. Here,” he says, parting the curtains and placing the water down on the table beside him. 

At the sight of the drink in the glass, Ilya realizes how parched he is. There’s a taste in his throat like burnt toast. He lifts the glass to his mouth and drinks, greedily; in his thirst, some of the water spills down his chin, along his throat. When he places the glass back on the table it rings, empty.

“Thank you,” he says, turning back towards Asra. “How long was I…?”

“Not long,” Asra says, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. “But it’s a good thing the storm stopped—I had to open a window. If I hadn’t aired the place out you might have slept for awhile.”

He had noticed that, the freshness of the place. In the wake of the storm there’s even a faint chill in the house. It almost feels as though the ritual has changed the weather, the house more than it has changed him. “Asra, I don’t feel any different. How do you know it worked?”

The look Asra gives him is frosty. Ilya’s not sure if it’s because he’s as uncertain of the ritual’s outcome as Ilya is, or if he’s simply offended that Ilya would imply he failed.

“I guess I don’t,” he says, cooly. “But if we go upstairs I know a really easy way to find out.”

 

 

 

The stairs creak underfoot. Not a sound comes from the second floor. But oh, past the door, there she is—not tossing and turning as she once was, but supine, and still. Perhaps she has fallen into a gentler sleep, though Ilya suspects it is more likely that she has simply exhausted herself, and has no energy left to spend. But there is sweat yet on her brow, and though her cheeks are absent of color, lying as she is Ilya can see her chest rise and fall with each breath. Malak, ever watchful, guards her unconscious form from his perch on the headboard.

_It is not yet too late._

Asra crosses the room, and gives Ilya a pointed look. But Ilya’s at a loss… he feels a little foolish. The whole thing has happened so quickly—Asra’s mind changed so abruptly—that he’s not even really sure what he’s supposed to do.

“So, ahh, tell me, Asra. What do I—how does this work?”

Asra tears his eyes away, turning them instead to Aredhel. “If it works,” and that word choice, ‘ _if_ ,’ makes Ilya’s stomach flip anxiously, “all you should have to do is touch her.”

That sounds absurdly—impossibly—simple. “Touch her?”

Asra only looks at Aredhel, his eyes darting across her skin, taking in the ways the illness has transformed and diminished her: the lack of color in her cheeks, the bruises upon her skin, the scabs of boils too stubborn to heal—the length of her hair, short, only grown a few inches since she cut it off all those weeks ago after getting sick. “If it was a wound, you could lay your hands over it. But the sickness is in her whole body, now. I think any contact will do.”

…but now that it’s come to it, Ilya is nervous. Not for Aredhel—he knows Asra, and he does not believe for a minute that Asra would risk more harm coming to her for a last-ditch, hopeless effort like the one they’re undertaking. No, this will go one of two ways for Aredhel: she will be cured, or she won’t be. That’s it.

Ilya, though… well. His words are full of words like _terrible price_ and _risk_ and _wraith_ and standing on the brink of actually _invoking_ the magic Asra has placed upon him, the fact that he is currently in possession of all his limbs is a small comfort. Though he is its host, Ilya really knows stunningly little about this magic, or even magic generally. Whether or not it cures Aredhel, what is the act going to do to him?

Of course, no fate, however gruesome, is going to change his mind. But if he’s going to risk madness, or a maiming—or, hell, even death—he’d very much like an opportunity to say goodbye.

So when he kneels at Aredhel’s beside, he does not let Asra’s presence censor him. Though he very much wants to touch her—to brush his knuckles over her cheek, or push the damp hair from her face—he places his hand instead on the cloth of her sleeve and shakes her, gently.

“Aredhel,” he croons, gently. “Hey. ‘Red.”

She does not stir. She is, after all, very ill—perhaps she is too close to the end now to be pulled out of the black embrace of sleep. Not, anyway, by any mortal means… fair enough. It was a sentimental notion, but one he cannot afford to cling to. If she is so spent that he cannot wake her, there is no time to waste on repeated efforts.

“Ilya?”

Her voice is hoarse, his name barely more than a slur of vowels, but it is her voice—and her head turns towards his, her eyes opening slowly, lids pulled back on mere crescents of red. Yet that is all he needs—it is enough. He laughs, both despite and because of his anxiousness, though the sound is more a wheezed choke of surprise, not his normal bark of laughter.

“Yeah,” he says, grinning. His fingertips trace circles on her bicep over the cloth of her sleeve. “Yeah, it’s me.” 

A loose smile tugs at her mouth. Pleased, she’s so pleased to see him, and he—he _holds,_ his body utterly still but for the shapes his fingers trace upon her arm _._ It is so hard, so damnably difficult not to reach out for her, to touch her, to kiss her, gently. But for all he knows even the lightest touch will set off whatever magic Asra’s mark has bestowed upon him, and he cannot yet take that risk. He holds himself steady, holds himself back.

“Aredhel, I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry that I did this to you.”

She hums, low in her throat, and her eyes crack open a little wider. “Doesn’matter. You’re here now. S’what counts.”

She has no idea how right she is. Ilya resists the urge to laugh again. “Yeah. I am.”

But now that Aredhel is awake, Ilya is painfully, acutely aware of Asra behind him, watching over his shoulder. Asra doesn’t seem particularly impatient—he is willing to permit Ilya his indulgence before God-knows-what happens—but his presence still makes Ilya a little uncomfortable. This is not exactly something he’s pictured doing with an audience, especially not Asra. But if he does not say these things to her now, even if Asra is here to witness them, he may very well not have another chance. And so the choice is clear.

His fingers stop circling, grip the fabric of her sleeve, cling to it. _How I wish I could touch her._

“Aredhel, you… you know that I love you, don’t you?”

She doesn’t respond—only blinks at him in surprise. Then her eyes narrow, not out of exhaustion but in suspicion. It starts slow but it mounts and by the time she speaks it’s plain across her face.

“I—why are you telling me this?”

“Because I…” Ilya begins, gripping her sleeve tighter. “I’m sorry, please don’t hate me for this, but I just—I couldn’t—”

It should not surprise him—she has always been remarkable, in more ways than one—but she must yet have some hidden reservoir of strength to call upon, because as he trips over his words she raises herself off her pillow and onto her forearm to look him sternly in the face.

“You’re frightening me, Ilya,” she says, and her words are no longer slurred—she is awake, alert. He’s alarmed her enough to pull her back into wakefulness. “What’s going on? Is everything alright?”

“It’s going to be,” Ilya said, nodding his head at her for emphasis. “I’m going to make up for it. Going to fix everything, I promise. Just…”

His fingers release the fabric of her sleeve. It is a pitiful substitute for the touch he craves, and the distraction of it is no longer enough to content him. _He loves her._ It does not matter that she has not returned the sentiment. He had not done it seeking reciprocal affection—he had only wanted her to know it. To know him, and this, their relationship, for what it meant to him. Perhaps it will no longer matter when she finds out he’s been lying to him through his teeth, but it seems now there’s at least a fair chance he won’t be around when she does. For her, it is a risk worth taking—he loves her. 

And he can no longer resist the softness of her skin: his bare palms frame the sides of her face, cradling it between his hands.

Aredhel hisses; Ilya groans.

The sickness floods him like a broken dam unleashes of fury of water upon a tilled field. ( _like a wellspring! a doorknob!_ ) the web-like lines of Asra’s mark upon his throat begin to tingle, though now his mouth tastes not of ash, but of blood. He can barely form the thought— _it’s working! it’s working!_ —before a fresh spasm of pain wracks his body, and it takes all of his willpower not to let go of her face right then and there. But it is not done yet, he knows it—he grits his teeth—though the next spasm that runs through him is so intense that his vision darkens.

“Ilya. _Ilya!_ ”

“Aredhel…”

Asra. A hand on his shoulder, shaking him roughly, and the world slipping back in… slowly. He’d let go of Aredhel’s face after all, it seems. He’s bent over double beside the bed, arms tucked around his waist… his face feels too warm. But as the woodgrain of the bed frame comes into focus before his eyes, as he is allowed the briefest of respites from the agony that was gripping him, he remembers _why._

Aredhel rests above, the rhythm of her breathing slow—perhaps, not as labored as it had been? (Does he dare hope?) Hot, sharp pain twists in his gut—he winces, counts his breaths until it passes—then reaches for her, placing the pad of his finger ever so gently beneath her eye and pulling at the skin of her lid… and when the eye beneath is revealed, it is the perfect shade of white.

 _She is safe. She is safe._ He repeats those three words in his mind over and over. They carousel around his brain, and the relief of it is enough to deaden the next wave of pain that rocks through him. What does the pain matter? He thinks of the Lazaret, of Valdemar, of the pit beneath the palace—yes, however intolerable, even this pain is less than he deserves. He will endure it—not for a moment will he regret it. Because—at last!—she is safe.

‘ _I know I am going to die,’_ she had said in the boat, so resigned to her fate. _But you didn’t. And you’re not going to. Not now._

But Asra is looking at him, and he does not look half as pleased as he should. He looks… concerned, but Ilya’s the focus of his attention. 

_She is safe. Why is he worried about me?_

“Ilya…” Asra says. “Your eyes.”


	8. Gone, Sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> …it’s less bloody than she expected. Of course, yes, certainly there is evidence of blood spilt. But there’s no dramatic arterial spray on the walls, no errant stains on the floor. Then again, ghoulish overkill, historically, has been more her wheelhouse than Asra’s. He’s even—she almost laughs at the sight, though there really isn’t anything humorous about it—he’s even cleaning up after himself. He’s up to his elbows in pink bubbles, blood-soaked soap suds, scrubbing the wooden surface of the table clean.

Lost, and confused as a newborn at first blinking glance. Where are the trumpet-shaped flowers of arrival, smelling sweetly of vigor and fertility? Or, else, where is the velvet-crushed blackness, so total and pitch it forbids any observation of itself, that embrace of eternal senseless slumber? 

For when she wakes, it is not upon some distant shore, a place where freed souls flock when their skins have been left behind, abandoned in death— _unchained, at last_! Nor does she find herself standing before gates of white inlaid with abalone, or golden scales of judgement. She is not commanded to cut her heart from her chest and weigh its innocence, a trial she would almost surely fail, the tar of black magic leadening her soul. 

She is not locked in the Lazaret, its cold damp stone closing in upon her like a tomb; she is no longer upon the roof, held between two lovers, the hawthorn tree dripping white petals upon them. And the fact that she’s opened her eyes at all rules out decisively a state of non-existence, a death as black and forgetful as grave soil.

This distresses her mightily, but it takes a moment for her mind to catch up and remember why. Like a film with the sound out of sync with its picture, the muscles of her body clench and her fingers run along the length of her throat with anxious horror, all of these tightly coiled and cold feelings misplaced until from the deep pools of sleep her mind wrestles free the memory of Ilya’s words:

_You know that I love you, don’t you?_

A shock like snow falling into the warm crevices of a winter coat collar. Her body coils tighter, as though to lash out at—what?—a memory, a phantom, a deed already done. She _had not been asked._ She had not been given the opportunity to say, _no._ To what? She knows not the _cause,_ but she lies awake in full appreciation of the _effect_ :

Her whole body stiffens at once, curling tighter around herself to protect her softest parts from the fear that wants to sink its talons into her. This does little to no good, for she notices immediately this act (the curling and uncurling, the tight ball her body used to make against the plague-hurt) does not cause her the pain it used to, the pain it should cause if she were still sick.

With a turn of her head, Aredhel sweeps her eyes around the room only to find she is alone. She thinks of the mark she’d seen on Ilya’s throat, and before seeing it, how _certain_ she had been that she would die…

… _maybe_ , she thinks, and has to suppress a bitter and twisted laugh, _I did die, and this place is my Hell._ There is no fire nor brimstone, but in a way, it would be a poetic and just cage. She has spent the better part of her life—both her darkest days and her brightest—in Albert Mooney’s house, never able to escape it for long. She has claimed, bitterly to Asra, that the house is haunted by ghosts; a more accurate rephrasing would be that _the_ _house haunts_ her. Over time though it saturates with memory and experience it resits change, permutations, alterations upon itself, bearing forever the quirks and signature of Albert Mooney’s hand. Always she will carry it with her, a choice she made long ago, a burden from which she cannot shake free. 

Fitting, then, that even in death, she would be trapped here.

But she does not think so, does not think she is. It is a desperate thought, a hysteria brought on by what facts she knows and those that she can easily guess. The puzzle is easy to complete, though she fears the image it will reveal, the allusions in the fragments. 

There is little doubt in her mind that she has survived—not only that, but _recovered from—_ the plague, for there is no pain. And in the place of that pain, once persistent, inescapable…? _Potential_. The feeling of the magic at the tips of her fingers is as subtle as the warmth of the sunlight that falls through the window, but it’s there, distinct. Since she had become sick, every spell she had cast was a struggle, like a slog through waist-deep mud before she could draw the magic to her call. Now, the path to the font of her magic is no longer clogged, or blocked: she can draw upon it freely.

And she cannot feel so much as a trace of sickness in her body. She breathes easy, quietly, without the lingering wheeze in her chest that always threatened an imminent coughing fit; her skin does not itch with rashes. As a healer she knows this to be unnatural. If she has been healed—and she’s not yet entirely sure ‘ _healed_ ’ is the right description for what has transpired—by traditional medicines, she should still feel the sickness leaving her system, like a bad hangover. 

There is only clarity. Potential. A vigor that steadily increases the longer she blinks herself awake. When her stomach twists uneasily she knows it for what it is: not nausea, not sickness, but fear.

Clicking from above— _ah,_ so she is not alone after all. She tilts her head and sees Malak above her, his talons tapping against the headboard. Despite her unease, she grins. As Malak performs this little dance—shifting his weight, looking down at her eagerly—it is the most animated she’s seen him in weeks. She reaches for him and the raven leans forward, nibbling affectionately on her fingertips before he hops onto her wrist and allows himself to be lowered onto her stomach. Two fingers of her free hand come to stroke the smooth black feathers of his head.

“Good morning, my angel,” she coos, softly. “What the devil have we gotten ourselves into this time, hmm?”

The answer comes quick, matter-of-fact: ‘ _Blood magic._ ’

Aredhel can’t help it: she laughs aloud. “Yeah? No kidding,” she remarks, dryly. Then she turns her eyes to the stairs.

Blood magic. The brilliant, white gossamer lines on Ilya’s throat had made that plain enough. But there’s still the questions of both _why_ and _how…_ though the “how” she thinks she can answer without difficulty.

‘ _Watch the door_ ,’ she instructs Malak, then lifts her arm to deposit him back on the headboard. She swings her legs over the side of the bed—winces when the frame creaks, counts four full breaths before she moves again—then drops, silently, to the floor.

It is the first time in a long time that such movement has not brought with it a pain like needles being hammered through her joints, but any pleasure she might derive from this new freedom of movement is lost on her. She is too busy reaching beneath the bed, dispelling the warding magic she’d set there years ago, and prying up the loose floorboard. That the wards still function should tell her all that she needs to know, but she cannot quite believe it until she’s seen it for herself.

Once the floorboard is free—once she has set it aside—Albert Mooney’s book stares back at her from beneath the bed, a fine layer of dust settled over its crimson cover.

Aredhel frowns, puzzled. _Not that, then._  

Rather than easing her anxiety, this worsens it, for the answer only leads to more questions. If she has seen what she thinks she’s seen, how on _earth_ did Asra manage to pull it off without consulting Albert’s book? She supposes it’s not impossible that he’d found a similar spell in the palace library, but that doesn’t seem likely. Albert had been certain this tome was one-of-a-kind—he’d gone to great lengths to acquire it, and never revealed to her how much the knowledge had cost him, or the currency that cost had been paid in. That meant it had not come cheaply.

Chewing her bottom lip, she replaced the floorboard, reactivated the wards to hide the old book. It seemed silly—she had concealed this book to prevent a tragedy which has already come to light—but she supposes it’s got more to do with habit than reason, the small comfort of ritual. 

This morning she will take whatever comfort she can get.

Rising, she extends her arm; Malak makes the hop from the headboard to her forearm easily. If such dark magic has truly been cast in this house, there is no trace of it here; any lingering evidence of what has transpired while she was { _too delirious to consent to treatment!_ } unconscious will be downstairs. She tucks her arm against her chest, drawing his warmth against her, caressing the feathers between his wings. He stretches into her touch, releases a soft _quork_ of contentment as she steers them to the stairs.

On the landing… Aredhel hesitates, hair standing on end, every inch of her awake and alert in a way her body has not been in months. Perceptions unclouded by a wave of red sickness, she sees as clear and cold as winter air. It is a fearful clarity—her mouth twists into an ugly, indecisive snarl. There’s no odors, no lingering miasma, but still she dreads what awaits her below. 

Sensing her unease, Malak stretches in her arms, butting his head against her jaw. It is a small comfort, better than none. She is not sure if she would be brave enough to confront whatever may or may not await her without his company.

( _As inextricable from her soul, as tightly bound to her as she is to this house: her constant companion, her love, her angel, her eyes._ )

She counts her breaths, and tallies the steps as she descends them. The counting calms her. It is an old habit, descending the staircase in this fashion (counting breaths, in through the nose, chest tight, Malak close) though she has not performed it in quite some time. Years. 

At age seventeen she would wake each morning on the soft woven mat that served as her mattress only to see the bed as empty as it had been the night before. Wonder to herself, ‘ _Has he fallen asleep again with his nose in a book? Or might he still be awake, combing through another of those horrid old tomes?_ ’

Or, ‘ _has one of his spells finally gone wrong?_ ’

“ _Finally._ ” Not because she wished any ill on Uncle Albert, but things going wrong seemed, at that point, an inevitable eventuality. They never spoke about the work he was doing, but she knew without being told that he was looking for some way to undo his mistakes—to bring Brona back to him, through the viscous, thick walls of the otherworld (perceived, incorrectly, by many mortals to be impermeable) either permanently or briefly, long enough to say all the things he had not been present to say to her when she had died. Sweet nothings, reassurances. Promises of fidelity and devotion. More than all this: _apologies._ An airing out of his regrets.

_Brona, o Brona, my mayflower, my fae: how I should have listened to you, the wisest of the two of us._

This purpose had possessed him utterly, turned him into a withered and bitter old man. And Aredhel knew that (as desperate men are wont to do) her Uncle was being driven to darker and fouler, more ancient forms of magic. The evidence of this would have been impossible for Albert to hide. 

But every time Aredhel tried to question him, or bring up the subject, Albert would only smile at her and brush off her concern. Most days, it was only in the morning—creeping down the stairs to wake him, or send him to bed before she opened the shop—that she saw him or spoke to him at all. They rarely took meals together. Often she was not sure when, what, or _if_ her Uncle even ate at all. Rather it seemed that he nourished himself only on his obsession.

At seventeen she was less strong, she thinks, but still the dread in her stomach on those mornings was as tightly knotted as it is now. For one thing, routine breeds boredom, and over time her apprehension had lessened, if not her fear. Most mornings she'd only discover Albert as expected: passed out in the card room (then, his study) with his face planted in a book. Sometimes he had fallen into such a deep exhaustion that she could not wake him. She would gently ease his spectacles off his face, make him as comfortable as she could, and draw the thick velvet curtains closed so none of the customers would see the shop’s proprietor passed out in the middle of the day like a common drunk. 

This—now—is different. More painful. Maybe because she already knows what she will find, the mark on Ilya’s neck still burning behind her eyelids like sunspots…. 

And then, from the card room: scrubbing.

Asra's turned the card room into a sort of study of his own, in recent months. Aredhel had considered persuading him against it—she was not fond of the idea of him working there, brushing against the residual psychic energy of Albert’s old failures—then thought better. As a matter of practicality, she had given him use of the room without protest. Until now, she has had no reason to regret that choice. 

Malak squawks softly in protest—in her anxiousness she's held onto him too tightly. When she releases him he hovers, then settles upon the more comfortable perch of her shoulder. She can feel his beak combing through the hair behind her ear, the same gesture he uses to preen. A gentle encouragement. 

_‘Brave. I am beside you.’_

Aredhel lifts her arms, parts the beaded curtain. 

…it’s less bloody than she expected. Of course, yes, _certainly_ there is evidence of blood spilt. But there’s no dramatic arterial spray on the walls, no errant stains on the floor. Then again, ghoulish overkill, historically, has been more her wheelhouse than Asra’s. He’s even—she almost laughs at the sight, though there really isn’t anything humorous about it—he’s even _cleaning up after himself._ He’s up to his elbows in pink bubbles, blood-soaked soap suds, scrubbing the wooden surface of the table clean. When she’d parted the curtains he’d froze like a wild animal at the sound of a twig snapping in the dark. And she can feel his eyes on her, waiting for her to speak first, to make the first move, giving her that space… but she’s only looking at the table.

Or the bits of it she can make out between the lathered soap, anyway. It does not reveal the whole picture but it speaks well enough. There are dozens of sigils scoring the card table’s surface. From a glance she can tell that many of them would have been failed attempts—Asra should consider himself lucky none of them backfired catastrophically on him. But it's also clear from their number and their permutations that Asra's success was not sheer luck. He had been methodical, calculated.

Good, careful work, she must admit, even if she loathes the lengths to which Asra has been driven. The thought occurs to her: _I was a better teacher to him, sickened and weak and discouraging, than I ever was when I was actually trying._ Were the circumstances different, she might have been proud.

But there is no room within her for pride, now. She is too swelled up with anxiety, and fear. Magic of the kind that Asra had used to save her is not won without cost, though she doubts Asra is the one who has paid for it. Again she sees spider web white on Ilya’s pale throat. A silken trap, woven with such magic and such intent that Aredhel is not sure she will be able to untie it. She _must_ try. It appears as though Asra has drawn this sigil—untested—from trial and error alone, and there is no telling what complications this may lead to, the unintended consequences of the magic upon its host, mistakes Asra would not have noticed at the time of casting.

She keeps her eyes fixed on the table. She cannot— _will not_ look at Asra. If she does, it will be too hard to keep control of herself… and she does not want to begin her unanticipated second act as a Real Live Girl by flying off the handle. 

Aredhel lifts her arm, idly, to brush her fingertips over Malak’s toes as he clings to her shoulder. Even this small contact brings her strength, enough to wrestle her lungs and her mouth into the mechanics of producing language. She fights very hard to keep the panic out of her voice, to keep her tone level (and not as furious as she feels.) In the end her words are hardly more than a whisper.

“Asra… where is Ilya?”

(She is not looking at Asra—she does not see the shadow that passes over his face before he straightens himself, using a rag to wipe the residual soap suds from his arms.)

“Well, good morning to you, too,” he says, his voice too cheery for the occasion. “How are you feeling?”

This—his little avoidance—is almost enough to break her control over herself, to send her into a rage. But her voice is still level when she speaks, an acceptable volume, even her tone turns steely.  “I am alive. That is what you had hoped to accomplish, is it not?” She punctuates this point with a hard look, meeting his eyes for the first time that morning. “And you have not answered my first question.” 

Asra holds her eyes as long as he can bear, before he casts them back upon the table. “He is not here. He left last night.”

“He left?” she replies, flatly. That seems unlikely—she does not think that after last night and what she still remembers of it ( _you know that I—_ ) she finds it difficult to believe Ilya would have left her side. It seems far more plausible that Asra kicked him out. 

Malak caws on her shoulder. ‘ _Gone. Sick._ ’

And at that, the wood of the dam _groans_ , the flood and the tempest of anger and hurt straining against the gates she has constructed to hold them back. (Tempest tossed by fear, _gone, sick—_ whereishe ishealright danger!isheindanger!ishe—)But by the look on Asra’s face—glancing uneasily to the side—he knows it’s coming. He’s spent enough time with Malak by now to know, more or less, what her familiar has told her.

Her words are a hiss: “He was ill, and you _let him leave_?!”

“Let him leave,” Asra repeats, weighing the shape of those words in his mouth, his tone wry. “Aredhel, I asked him to stay. He chose to go. I could have followed him, but… it was much more important to me, making sure that you were alright. Recovering.”

“You are responsible for him!” she claps back, as naturally as thunder follows lightning. “You have done this—this _unspeakable_ thing to him, branded him with this magic I am not sure either of you wholly understand—”

Asra’s interruption, is quiet, calm, but pointed. “I did not do anything to Ilya that he did not explicitly ask me to do.”

“ _That does not mean it was right!_ ” Potential, vigor, and the font of her magic clear: her voice rings with rage and control slips from her hands as it rarely does, the bubbles frothing, threatening to slip over the edge of the table, the beaded curtain stirring though their is no breeze. “Disregarding the fact that this is the _one thing_ I explicitly asked you not to do—to make such bargains for me, to put your safety and conscience at such risk—you should never have dragged Ilya into this. You know him, you know what he is like.  Generous to a fault, self-deprecating, absolutely _clueless_ when it comes to magic—did you even explain to him the risks in a way he would understand?”

Asra’s purple eyes narrow, darken, a sky as dusk settles. “Do you think so little of me, now? Do you really think that I would try and trick him?”

_No_. No, it’s easy to believe, knowing Ilya (remembering, at once, his despair on the boat, his whispered promises, and remembering them so vividly it is as though she can still feel his tears wetting her cheek) that he consented as wholly as he was able. Deception would not have been necessary, requiring more labor than the yield was worth. But still the fact remains: the course of Ilya’s life may be forever altered, if there is even much life for him to left to live—it is not impossible this untested magic will claim him in her stead—and all for the sake of time and health she had not asked for, treatment she had not agreed to.

The bitterness and the fear twists her into something cruel.

“Did you do this because he loves me?”

The veneer cracks. Asra’s calm, his distance, his armor shatters and falls from his face, and he is left standing looking slightly lost, disoriented—he had expected her to be angry, but not thought she would go _quite_ that far—and more wounded than she has ever seen him. The surprise of it unsteadies him. He sinks into one of the wooden chairs, his lips parted, but he cannot shepherd any words to fill this stunned silence.

_Do you really not know why I have done this?_ he thinks, eyes darting between the flecks of blood still crusted to the table. _Have you forgotten so easily?_

“I did it,” he begins, “because _I_ love you.”

His words are so soft. They stir something in her, a flutter of tenderness, and she must clench the flesh of the wall of her mouth between her teeth to hold it back. She cannot untangle this mystery of ‘love’ right now, whether it has lingered or flown. It is too quiet to hear above the roar of her anger. Still, when she speaks next, her voice has lowered. She tries—best as she can—to be gentle.

“But not in the way I wished to be loved,” she corrects Asra. “Not in the way I asked: to be loved gently, to be released gently. To be free.”

Asra only shakes his head; this is a hypocrisy he will no longer let stand. “You asked something of me that you would not have been willing to give. What would you have done, in my place?” he challenges her, his eyes hard. “If I had been sick instead, if I had asked you—begged you, even—would you have let me die?”

It is a question to which he already knows the answer; her silence reinforces it. She has nothing to say in reply. In many ways, this is the kindest way for Asra to point out the obvious. He has not, as he could have, thrown the litany of her own misdeeds in her face: the poisons bottled and sold, the hexes invoked, the intents she has expressed—thought never acted upon—of all the heinous, violent, and repulsive ways she wishes to drive Lucio out of the city. 

But all of these darks things, though unspoken, are still present in the room, the precedent that makes Aredhel’s answer clear: _No, I would have stopped at nothing, tore my teeth into such meat, shredded the planes of space and time both, broken any bone or any rule to make you safe_. 

And Asra… Asra is full of such indignation. Such resentment. _I am so sick of you treating me like I am fragile, precious, pure; as though knowledge is perilous to me, as though I am not capable of wielding my gift responsibly._ This and a hundred other bitter thoughts circle his head, ready to be slung across the table like mud on her honor, her “righteous” anger. _I would have stopped at nothing. I would have found a way to save you, to bring you back, whatever the cost—with or without Ilya. As would you. Once._

He says none of this. They have wounded each other enough for one morning. What a fine morning it is—the sun bright, the air cool, the smell of the sea winding through town. He had hoped to take her out, to have a chance for them to enjoy her wellbeing. To be, for once, _glad._ Wishful thinking, perhaps, on his part. Now it seems that will not come to pass.

Never mind. Asra is patient. Now, she is recovered; now, there is time, time enough for the both of them to forgive one another for their bad behavior, for the unattractive traits that Death has brought out in them.

“You have not yet recovered your full strength,” Asra says, quietly, rising from his seat. He rounds the table towards her. “You should rest,” he implores, gently, and leans towards her to brush his lips affectionately against his cheek… but she pulls her head away before mouth meets skin, leaving his side and ascending the stairs without a word or a backwards glance.

 

 

Aredhel had not wanted nor asked for more time.

But what she had wanted was irrelevant. That is clear to her now. Just as her resignation to die was, apparently, irrelevant. As her desire to spend her last months in comfortable love with Asra had proved _irrelevant._ He had made his own decisions, and it is too late now for either Asra or herself to change that, whatever regrets there may be.

The only thing that is left is for her to decide what _she_ is going to do, though that is no small thing: she has not had to make a decision like that in a long time. Where is she to go? What is she to do? Until recently, time had been short, her options… limited. 

This much, she knows: she cannot stay here, and out there—beyond the walls of this house which cradles stale misery like a stillborn—there is someone who needs her. 

_Gone. Sick_. 

From the disorganized bookshelves she pulls a slip of parchment, an enchanted quill that requires no well of ink. Writes, by way of explaining her absence:

_Asra,_

_I will not (and cannot in good faith) ask you to leave this house, for it is as much your home as it is mine. But I cannot stay here. I will return when I have had the chance to untangle how I feel, and what I intend to do about it._

_Aredhel_

She does not think it is necessary to mention where she is going. That much, she thinks, will be clear.

She leaves the note on the table in the kitchen, then goes to the cabinets, a black traveling back slung over her shoulder. Her bare feet are silent on the floorboards. The house does not betray her with a punctuated creak or groan, audible proof she is out of bed, not ‘resting’ as instructed. From the kitchen she takes a jar of spiced coffee, a filter of silk, a well of enchanted ink, various teas and tinctures she had prepared for herself to alleviate her sickness. Each of these items she arranges in her bag with great care.

At the foot of the bed stands a wardrobe: Aredhel thrusts open its doors. Within, there is little in the way of clothing. Asra and Aredhel have a dozen or so outfits to their name, split between them. The better part of the wardrobe is stacked with precarious towers of books, stretching from floor to ceiling, and organized in no particular way. 

She has been clear headed, she thinks, and admirably practical until this moment, when, standing in front of the wardrobe, eager to change out of her current dress (the cloth still thick with the smells of the Lazaret, and her own sickness and fever sweat) she hesitates. 

Reaching out, her fingertips just brush the cloth. She contemplates the sea of monotones that make up her half of the clothing. Asra and her have always shared but to do so now seems inappropriate. As she surveys her options, she feels a girlish flutter in her stomach, as she considers (absurdly, she realizes) which outfit Ilya will find her most comely in. 

She shakes her head at herself, scowls. _Gone. Sick_. Time is precious; she will not waste it hemming and hawing about dresses like a teenager. She pulls a grey dress at random off the rack to change into, moving to close the door—

But there, atop the pile of books, is a small jewelry box. It contains a comb of Brona's, a pretty silver and green thing she had inherited from her family. It was the only adornment of any worth Brona had owned—she had been practical about clothing, did not have a taste for lavish fabrics and bright shining metals. Since Brona’s death, Aredhel had only worn the comb once. 

She hesitates, then snatches the box and slips it into her bag. She will wear the comb, more for comfort than vanity; she will need, she thinks, some of Brona's quiet strength today. 

 

 

Climbing down from the second-story window is easy work. It is also, probably, her only avenue of exit. If she tries to leave through the shop, he will see her, and she is certain he will try to stop her. Perhaps he will offer to go in her stead. It will only end in another difficult argument, better avoided by taking the road less-travelled. She has scaled down the wall before, on more than one occasion. She had not lied to Ilya, the night she had shooed him out the window: it was not terribly difficult. The puzzle of it though—searching for handholds and footholds, clinging to the wall while she charts her descent—thrills her, for she knows this is not a feat she would have been capable of the night before, when she was too sick and weak to stand, never mind climb. 

It is early, still—early enough that the evening’s chill still lingers, cool on her skin. But the sunlight is warm, and Aredhel lifts her face to it, grinning. She allows herself the space of one breath to feel these things—the sun, the sea breeze in her hair, the distant sounds of the city which she is finally free to rejoin—before she turns to Malak, who has flown down from the window sill to greet her on the ground.

“I will need your help, my eyes,” she coos at him, extending her arm so that her familiar may hop down the length of it, coming to rest on her forearm and tilting his head as he meets her gaze. “Are you strong enough? Have you, too, healed?”

_Hale bird!_ comes the quick response, and her raven demonstrates his eagerness with another excited hop. 

She grins to see him so full of energy. His feathers are still patchy in places, but he will recover, she thinks; the longer they are both healthy, the more energy he is able to draw from her, his coat will grow back in.

Aredhel lifts her hand, curls her fingers gently around the back of Malak’s beak, and rests her thumb just between his eyes. Between them her request hums like a violin string, resonant, vibrating:

_Find Ilya._

Malak caws, his instructions clear. Without further ado he launches himself into the air, beating his wings as he rises up, up, above the shop, higher than the grasp of hawthorne branches on the roof, into the sky and out over the city. Even as he recedes, pulling further and further away from her, she can feel her familiar’s joy at the chance to spread his wings, to be useful, to _live_. 

Aredhel stands, rooted to the spot, until Malak’s black shape disappears behind the crown of a distant building… then she turns, following the path to the market. 

 

 

It is a little bit ironic. She is healthy, free of sickness, but she feels more nervous now than she had with death breathing down her neck. Walking calms her only a little. She’s still rattled from what she’d seen in the card room, what it implied for her future with Asra, but those concerns recede as she leaves the apothecary behind… only to be replaced with fresh ones. 

If Ilya had fallen ill in some way after he’d cured her, why had he left? She has left the shop to look for him, but will he even wish to see her? She had drawn him into all of this nonsense, taken him away from his work, and now he has risked his very life—twice, if you count the Lazaret—to help her. She remembers his words, the way they had melted her before she had enough sense to be alarmed by his sudden confession: _You know  that I love you, don’t you?_  

She braced herself. She would forgive him if, after last night, he no longer did. Perhaps—if he has let go of a love so red-hot it has driven him to risk so much for the sake of it—she should be happy for him.

There is pleasure, though, in being out in the daylight: being free of her sickness. The city is not quite as lively as it used to be, with the threat of plague on everyone’s mind, but it makes such a difference to be able to be among others. And here, in the market, commerce continues, reliable as always. She sets her anxiety aside and allows herself to bask, at least for now, in the colors of expensive silks and the smells of exotic incense, crowded stalls of bright luxuries.

Some of the vendors recognize her, though she has not made in appearance here in months. They smile at her, greet her by name, ask after where she has been. She makes them up on the spot. The lying is pleasurable, as it divorces her, at least for awhile, from the true circumstances of her disappearance.

Less than an hour later, though, she’s left the market, wandered into one of the pocketed gardens that dot the city. Since the plague, many of them have been gated shut, left for the plants to claim them. City resources were stretched too thin to maintain them. Only those that most please Lucio’s vanity have remained intact.

This, of course, is no trouble for her. She is alive and awake and newly come into her magic, and the lock on the gate is cheap: she presses her palm to its mouth and concentrates, wills the lock to yield. It springs open suddenly with a cheery clang against the wrought-iron gates and chains, and Aredhel slips inside.

Ivy has already begun to claim the marble columns and birdbaths, but there is yet one marble bench that is clear of growth. It rests at the feet of an imposing statue of a minotaur. Aredhel rests upon it. Starstrand winds above her head, its blooms closed until the evening, but its pleasant aroma perfumes the air as she opens her bag and withdraws the prize of her shopping spree: a small teapot, meant for serving and not the fire of the hearth. Alongside it she places the bottle of ink, taken from the kitchen.

She lifts the lid from the teapot, dips her finger into some of the ink she had taken from the shop— _blackened with fire ash, for heat_ —and draws a sigil at the bottom of the pot. Then she lifts the pot to her face, putting her mouth against the main hole in the body where the lid sits. Slowly, she breathes into the body of the teapot; when her breath emerges from the other side, it steams the way an exhale does in coldest winter.

Satisfied, she replaces the lid. As she’s repacking her bag, there’s a sharp caw overhead; a moment later, Malak descends, perching prettily on the horns of the bull sculpture behind her.

“There he is!” she sighs, extending her arm to him. He jumps the distance to meet her, talons gripping her arm as she pulls him closer. “Did you find him, my darling? Where is he?”

_Dungeon._

She screws up her face, eyes narrowed as she looks at her familiar. “Dungeon? Where? At the Palace?”

Malak bobs his head up and down in affirmation, a gesture she normally finds endearing and would now were it not for the troubling news he’s brought her. “What is he doing there, I wonder?” she thinks aloud to herself, but Malak releases another soft caw, and nips at her fingers. 

“Oh!” she says, in surprise. She had nearly forgotten. She fishes in her pockets, her fingers finding the waxy parchment and lifting it into her palm. The parchment falls open, revealing a piece of raw meat—a bit of lamb heart, his favorite—bought from one of the market butchers. “I did not forget about you,” she coos, as he takes the meat from her hand.

But even as she smiles at him, her thoughts turn dark. She is glad to see her familiar, healthy and active again. In some ways it warms her more than her own recovery. Where she must go next, though, Malak will be of little help.


	9. Anywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She has always liked a challenge—especially the kind that involve sneaking around—but she meets no resistance as she wanders through the palace’s halls, making her way down to the lower floors. The palace is swollen with activity. She could probably walk about bare faced, as she is, and still not be stopped.
> 
> Still, as she walks, her hands tremble. Taking shapes and breaking into the palace—that is easy magic, of the kind she has toyed with since she was a child. Both are far easier than untangling the knot of dread in her stomach. Behind her eyes she sees the blood stains on the card table, and the white lines lit up on Ilya’s throat, and Malak’s warning—'gone, sick.'
> 
> 'Please, please let him be alright.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please note the update below is NSFW.
> 
> also, a HUGE thank you to cedarmoons who helped beta'd this monstrosity for me. I highly recommend her 'handle with care' on AO3, it is beautiful and heartbreaking and Ziah is one of my favorite fan apprentices :)

Only a few scant hours have passed since Aredhel had been yanked from the precipice of death, but her recent acquaintance with her own mortality has inspired in her neither caution nor timidity. Instead, she is puffed up with youthful arrogance: taking shapes is easy magic, and she is full to bursting with magic, like sap springing from the bark of a maple tree.

She impersonates two palace guards and one servant as she winds her way through the palace, swapping disguises for no other reason than the pleasure it gives her.

The pains she takes to hide herself are hardly necessary. Tomorrow is Count Lucio’s birthday—always celebrated in Vesuvia with the most extravagant and tasteless of spectacles, the Masquerade—and the palace grounds are crowded with the Count’s servants, foreign dignitaries, _ their _ servants, and vendors of all kinds of Vesuvian goods. The atmosphere is tense, frenetic: everyone is rushing about, running errands, preparing for the annual event.

Despite the plague overtaking the populace, and the city falling into disrepair, and the whispering that holding the celebration was in poor taste—a lavish waste of resources, given the present state of affairs in Vesuvia—the preparations for the Masquerade are, as far as Aredhel can tell, proceeding as planned. The severity of the sickness that poisoned his city was not enough to discourage the Count from holding his annual fete—for Lucio, she knows, is a greedy man, not easily dissuaded from sating his appetites.  

_ Good _ . His avarice has given Aredhel plenty of cover to come and go as she pleases in his home, right under his nose.

She has always liked a challenge—especially the kind that involve sneaking around—but she meets no resistance as she wanders through the palace’s halls, making her way down to the lower floors. The palace is swollen with activity. She could probably walk about bare faced, as she is, and still not be stopped. 

Still, as she walks, her hands tremble. Taking shapes and breaking into the palace—that is easy magic, of the kind she has toyed with since she was a child. Both are far easier than untangling the knot of dread in her stomach. Behind her eyes she sees the blood stains on the card table, and the white lines lit up on Ilya’s throat, and Malak’s warning— _ gone, sick. _

_ Please, please let him be alright. _

Until this moment, Aredhel has wanted so little. Asked for so little. A chance to pass in peace, a companion to spend those last days with—she had spent enough of her life alone, looking inside herself. She knew better than to want much more than that; she had known, roughly, the span of time she had left to live, and she knew it was wiser to keep her hopes modest.

All she had wanted—all she had dared to hope for—was to spend what time she had left with Asra.

_ Not a cruel or unreasonable request _ , she had thought, at the time she had made it. But reasonable or not, Asra had denied her, choosing instead to chase dangerous magic and leave her alone. She had warned him not to, asked him not to read those paths, seeking the magic with which he would attempt to bargain for her life; she had known, even as she had warned him, that he would disobey her.

But she had never in her wildest dreams imagined that he would succeed.

She is alive, wrapped in a miasma of magic waiting to be put to purpose. Just as keenly as she feels the density of this newfound power she feels  _ want _ . A longing, a desire burning so deep and hot and desperate, more unbearable than the fever that had burned through her only a day ago.  _ Please. Please _ . She wants to find him healthy. She had jumped in her grave and asked for her loved ones to smile as they entombed her, so comfortable with the inevitability of her own passing. But for Ilya to pass, now—for him to sicken, weaken, and die because of what Asra has done to him (what Aredhel has done to him, drawn him into her dark star, threading their lives together)—that might actually kill her. 

The clamor quiets and the crowd thins as she makes her way deeper into the bowels of the castle. Entering the dungeons, she lets the glamor of the palace guard slip off of her. It would be wiser, perhaps, to maintain the illusion, but she has not seen another soul for nearly ten minutes. And the dungeons are… well, dungeons. They’re damp, and empty, and each step Aredhel takes as she descends the staircase echoes eerily into the darkness. She will hear someone coming long before they see her; she will have plenty of time to slip the glamor back on, if need be. 

The dungeon looks not so different from the Lazaret, she thinks—or at least, what little she can remember of it. The stone walls glimmer with the same moist sheen; the halls are identical, rows upon rows of wooden doors opened on empty cells. That surprises her. Aredhel knows the hardened criminals are not kept here—there is a secure prison on another of the islands in the lagoon—but still she would think that Lucio would keep the dungeon full of people to do… whatever it is he wants to do to them. Even the plague, she thinks, could not temper Lucio’s appetite for violence, and she has always suspected that  _ particular  _ appetite is not sated by the tournaments in the Coliseum alone.

_ What are you doing down here, Ilya? _ she wonders to herself, for about the tenth time since Malak told her the doctor was hiding down here.

But then, at the end of the hall— _ there! _ —a door that is shut, and locked. Aredhel wills her hands to still their trembling, does not allow her feet the chance to slow or pause. Her hand reaches to the sliding door of the peephole and draws it back, and she leans forward, pressing her face to the door….

He hasn’t seen her, yet. Hasn’t heard the observation window sliding open. He’s lying on his back across a low stone bench, his arm thrown over his eyes. And seeing him, somehow, breathing, and safe… for a moment all of her anxiety lifts. She grins, stupidly—she’s so relieved to see him it makes her almost lightheaded. She croons through the bars, her voice lilting as she teases him:

“So I take it Lucio finally found out it was you who stole his war elephant?”

Lying prone on the stone bench, hiding his eyes in the crook of his elbow, Ilya Devorak passes fitfully in and out of sleep. It is the worst he has ever felt, and his heartache, for once, is only the half of it—and the lesser half, at that.

The pain is... excruciating. Though it has either lessened since the evening, or he has become better adjusted to it. He is no longer bent over and retching as he had been on the floor of Asra and Aredhel’s bedroom, blood seeping from his eyes, clutching his gut and thinking he was going to die. His body gives the occasional spasm, but he is able (for the most part) to rest, lying still on his back. 

As he is now doing. 

Upon a bench of stone.

In  _ jail.  _

…It’s really not that terrible, he supposes. There’s this, at least: Lucio has really only locked him down here to incentivize him. The Count still entertains the absurd notion he might be cured of the plague before his birthday. So it is that Ilya finds himself imprisoned, but not without company: his books, his notes, his lab instruments and other medical paraphernalia have been set up on a table against the opposite wall, brought here in a gesture of foolish hope. 

Though—perhaps—it is not so foolish a hope as it may seem. As Ilya’s body adjusts to the sickness he hosts, every twist in his gut, every stabbing pain behind his eyes, every ache in his bones brings him closer to the answer: the elusive cure. Lying still, things occur to him. The sickness had come on so quickly, but now he has spent the morning with it, adjusting to its company. And in a strange way, with the plague living within him, Ilya thinks he is beginning to understand it. Something felt, the dawning of an intuition just beyond his fingers—on the tip of his tongue.

Oh, how stunning it is, though. How _ ironic _ . All that cruelty he had inflicted in the lab under Valdemar’s supervision, weeks and months spent looking for a way to crack this sickness, and the most productive thing Ilya has done so far has been falling ill himself. 

_ Just what the doctor ordered, ha ha. _

Ilya’s not sure what it says about his current state of mind that he actually finds that funny, but the light guffaw he relinquishes to the darkness is soon silenced by the soreness and the nausea the laughter summons in his stomach.

It occurs to him that Aredhel had worn this pain with such dignity, never letting on how greatly she was suffering. If he had known last night the price of saving her—that it would result in his own sickness, this present anguish—would he still have paid it so willingly?

The answer comes to him quick and unwavering:  _ yes. _

Even though it is agony. Even though, he realizes, he very well might die. His mind flashes to the pit beneath the palace, and the screaming, and it is this, more than the pain that makes him want to retch: feeling, fully, what he has inflicted upon others. Arguably his test subjects have had it worse, for some of Valdemar’s ‘cure’ attempts have greatened, rather than lessened, their burden of suffering—and Ilya’s not yet split open, some ill-educated doctor poking around his insides while he writhes. 

No, even if he had not cured Aredhel, Ilya is deserving of this fate. He knows it.

And last night, when he had cured her, when he was bent over double, crouched against the pain spreading through his body, he had caught the briefest glance at Asra. The magician had been looking at him with a look of utter disdain. For Asra had seen him truthfully, then: Ilya had told him everything. Asra saw him clearly. A doctor who had caused more pain than he had soothed, a wretch of a man too cowardly to stand against atrocity, to stop the cruelty of the Quaestor. He probably deserved Asra’s disdain, too, no matter how it pained him… how it smarted, to be looked at that way by someone he had once loved.

(In that moment, as Asra had looked at him — so distant, so cool — a couple of things had occurred to him at once:

He cannot see himself without the aid of mirror glass and so he cannot quite be sure, but he is pretty damn certain he is coming down with her sickness. And though that is, uhh...  _ weird _ , and not terribly scientific at all, it raises some deeply relevant scientific concerns. If he is sick, is he contagious? Can he infect Asra? If he coughs the wrong way, heaven forbid, is there a chance he could reinfect Aredhel, undoing all the work he had just done? Would he be able to cure her a second time? 

…Would he even live that long?

Well, Ilya has always tried to be an optimist— _ haha _ , another gut-achingly funny joke—so assuming he does live, what then...? And as Asra looks at him, his earlier words ring in Ilya’s ears:  _ I would have kicked you out of the house _ .

Honestly, looking back on things now, Ilya couldn't fault him. 

He should—he should go. Aredhel is safe. That is all he has dared ask for, and more than he deserves. But he cannot— _ will  _ not fuck it up by endangering her again. 

And she is in danger, as long as Ilya stays here. Lucio will be looking for him soon, he thinks. If he has not started already, he certainly will when he discovers in the morning that there was no one for Valdemar to collect at the Lazaret. Better for Lucio not to find him here, not to be drawn back to the shop. No, Ilya—Ilya will go to a place where the guards will find him with ease. He'll go home. 

As he had stumbled to his feet, towards the door, tripped down the stairs… Asra had called after him. Tried to stop him, keep him there. Impressions of warm hands tugging at the cloth at his shoulders, his back— _ no _ . Asra had said that his study of the magic was incomplete, Asra cannot know the repercussions of what he has wrought. Ilya will not stay here. Will not keep the sickness he harbors here. Will not lead Lucio’s goons here. Not this time, not again.)

He had underestimated Lucio, though. When he had arrived in the south quarter after much tumbling and halting in the streets to heave or hack, there were already four palace guards at his house, waiting beside the entrance in the alley. 

_ Four? I should almost be flattered.  _

His instinct is to run. It is an old dance, this flight from lawmen. In all the years before he came to Vesuvia, he'd been a wanted man more than once—the matter of the war elephant comes to mind—but this morning he had suppressed the instinct. If he flees, if they pursue him, they will only widen their search. Aredhel is safe, now. She is no longer sick and so the things Lucio can justify doing to harm her are limited. But that's never stopped him before, and Ilya would much like to stop the guards before they decide to give Mooney's Apothecary a second visit. 

And, really, considering the damage Aredhel did when the palace guards came to take her away to the Lazaret—when she was ill, enfeebled by plague—well… it is in the guard’s best interest that Ilya not lead them back there. He assumes none of them are keen to lose use of any of their limbs. So he only walks up to his door, arms raised above his head. 

“Ahh, Ludo,” he manages, grinning at one of the guards he recognizes. “Has Lucio sent you to come tuck me in?”

But the joke doesn't quite land. His voice does not ring with its usual suaveness. It's scratchy and haunted hoarse from all the coughing—it’s the kind of voice people use when they’re pretending to be possessed. The guards blink and draw back in surprise. 

It is at that precise moment that Ilya doubles over and vomits, directly onto another guard’s— _ Bludmila’s? Oh no _ —shoes.

There is a clamor at once. Surprise, fear, disgust. Arguing. One of his neighbors shouting at the guards to ‘ _ shut up, people are trying to sleep. _ ’ The guards shouting back. All of it barely registers—Ilya’s too busy watching the contents of his stomach stage an encore appearance on the cobblestones in the alley. He has managed to crawl over to the canal, so at least he’s not leaving his sick in the street. (A small consolation.) 

He's vaguely aware of the guards squabbling over what to do with him. It’s plain to them that he’s sick—sick enough that none of them really want anything to do with him. Certainly none of them are keen to touch him without gloves, without a mask.

_ Fair _ , Ilya thinks. He’s in quite a fucking state. 

Eventually, after his vomiting has subsided, he's ushered into his home. Not terribly gently, mind you—he’s prodded with the butt end of one of the guards’ spears until he stumbles over the threshold. The door slams behind him. 

Ilya does not mind. His apartment is dark and quiet. He has just enough strength to curl around himself before he falls into an uneasy sleep.

He only wakes again when he is deposited, roughly, upon the stone bench. The cold, hard surface knocking against his skull is enough to rouse him from unconsciousness, just in time to see the two plague doctors that carried him in closing the door behind them. They leave Ludovico behind, peering through the peephole. Ilya’s gaze is bleary, unfocused from sleep (or the plague, or, come to think of it, the smack to the head he’s just suffered) but he can recognize the guard from the tremble in his voice. 

“The Count has proclaimed that you are to be locked down here until you devise a cure or you perish, whichever comes first.”

_ Of course. _ He shouldn’t be surprised. Lucio’s vanity has driven him to farther extremes than this, and he had made his desires pretty clear yesterday, when Ilya had visited him in his wing. Ilya has no energy to fight it, to point out the ridiculousness of the Count’s request. “Fantastic,” he drawls, sarcasm plain despite the hoarseness of his voice.

But at the door, Ludovico’s shadow does not waver. He’s still standing at the door, peeking in at Ilya nervously.  _ What, is he going to watch me, now, too? I’m not  _ that _ slippery. _ After a moment, though, Ludo does speak, and his voice is more uneven than before. “Shouldn't you be—”

“I'll get to work when I can sit up without the world tilting underneath me, thanks, Ludo.” He doesn’t bear the guard any ill will—in the little he’s worked with him, he actually thinks Ludo is kind of sweet, probably too soft for the job he’s been given—but if he’s going to be locked up, he’s going to spend his solitude however he damn well pleases. And right now, he mostly just wants to focus on being able to move—hell, even breathe—without a wave of nausea rocking through him.

Then, he’ll get to work. Not for Lucio, but for himself: he has done so much wrong. So much evil. Even if he does cure the plague, cure the city, he is not sure that will be enough to make up for what he has been complicit in.

But it would be a damn good start.

By the time Aredhel (unbeknownst to Ilya) is winding her way through the dungeons to his door, he has not yet opened his notes. There is something close in the quiet of the sickness. The affliction is doubly useful: it brings him closer to unravelling the plague’s mystery and, at its worst, it serves as a distraction from the pain of his heart breaking. 

But when the physical pain ebbs a bit, recedes— _ ahh, there it is _ . The heartbreak. The pain of it does not begin to approach the plague aches and tremors, but it is this, more than the sickness, that makes him feel hopeless. 

Asra will have told Aredhel by now, he thinks, about his work with Valdemar. So that's the end of that. Ended, though not the way she’d planned: not by her death but the lifting of this veil of illusions. The charade is ended—she knows him now for what he is, knows that he is most decidedly not as kind or good or gentle as he has led her to believe. And surely she is repulsed. 

_ And surely, _ a little voice inside him whispers,  _ she is better off. Or will be, in the long run. Safer, happier without me.  _

In a way, it is almost a relief, to be locked down here. Lucio has done him a favor, given him the privacy to grieve as long as deeply as he needs. If for hours he lies still, or if he oversleeps, it's fine—he literally has nowhere else to be. He can succumb to his depression without the repercussions of normal life, without the judgement of others. His arm cast over his eyes, he waits for the plague pain to return, for the screaming of his nerves to drown out the lament of his soul. It is, undeniably, the more preferable of the two—

“So I take it Lucio finally found out it was you who stole his war elephant?”

That voice... she can't have—! He lifts his arm from his face and peers at the door, catches a peek of seaglass green eyes and pale hair. For a moment the disbelief is like the head rush that comes from standing too quickly; it makes him dizzy. What on  _ earth _ is she...?

"Aredhel! What are you doing here?"

“Did you really think that, after saving my life, I would not come looking for you?” Her voice is soft but tremulous, full of the kind of gratitude she had not been able—or willing—to express to Asra. “I wanted to make sure you were alright. I wanted to come see you.”

As she speaks there's another, softer sound. Like gears clicking in locks.  _ She isn't seriously _ — _! _

“And having found you,” she declares, “it looks like you are very much in need of a visit.”

He should stop her. He should turn her away before she gets a foot through the door but he’s a little bewildered. She has come here so easily, snuck right into the most heavily armed place in the city on one of the busiest days of the year. When Ilya had broken into the Lazaret to rescue her, he’d been sweating bullets, a bundle of nerves, but she is so self-assured. It’s the same attitude Asra always had, the way he acted like he was almost beyond Lucio’s grasp, beyond any repercussion the Count could visit upon him. But Asra—perhaps because he had been cloistering Aredhel in secret for all the time Ilya had know him—had never been quite so bold as Aredhel is now.

“Aredhel—” Ilya begins, a warning in his voice, but it is too late. The door is a poor match for her skill, and the lock yields before Ilya has a chance to speak. She opens the door in such haste it bangs against the cell wall, an echoing sound she does not bother to muffle before she is upon him. 

(Sloppy, she is being careless and sloppy, puffed up on youthful arrogance, dripping with magic, and utterly, entirely single minded:  _ make sure he is alright _ .)

Light as sea mist are her hands upon his face, gentle as the first warm breezes of spring. It is the most tenderly she has ever touched him, and Ilya recognizes this as empathy: she has known his illness intimately. She knows the pain each touch elicits. 

Put aside this new softness, however, and it is just as it always was. She greets him now as she always had at the shop: pulling back the lids of his eyes, looking hard at his sclera, the inside of his mouth, the scabs upon his skin. Now, however, her inspection finds only signs of sickness, instead of the good health she had wished for him; neither of them laugh, or smile the way they would upon the occasion of their previous reunions. 

This is new, too: when she is finished, when she has concluded her examination, her fingers wander to the column of his throat, her brow creasing as she caresses the place where the mark Asra has placed upon him hides. Aredhel cannot see it, but the magic is fresh enough that she can feel it, the concentrated sting of it puckering across planes. 

She forces a smile, lifting her hands from his throat, eyes roaming over his features as her fingers push a damp lock of hair out of his face. “Oh, you are quite a sight, aren't you?” she half-whispers, smoothing the hairs at his temple. “Still pretty, though,” she adds, with a smile, though her voice still carries a sadness. 

Ilya can't help it—even feverish as he is, he can feel his cheeks grow warmer with a blush that has nothing to do with sickness. She should not be here, and he should not encourage such affections any longer, but she is looking at him so intently and her eyes—so white!—and he is so thankful, so grateful that she is healthy still, that she is saved, safe… he is at a loss for words. 

She is so beautiful. Even here, in this hole, half in the dark, she is radiant. 

Her frown has not lifted, however. Again she runs her fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he says, shrugging off her concern. He cannot help it—he allows himself this one gesture of selfishness—he takes her hand in his and presses a chaste kiss to her palm. “Fit as a fiddle.”

He does not regret the choice he has made, not in the least. Not helping her, nor the present illness he now carries as a result. He does not want her to feel guilty. His attempt at deception—flimsy as it is—is to reassure her.  

But she is having none of it. “Ilya,” she says, and even just the way she speaks his name is a gentle reprimand, though she grins through it. It touches her. She knows what he is up to, lying to ease her burden.

He laughs, lightly, caught so easily. Well, the lie was a stretch, given that he was—how did she put it?—quite a sight. 

“Alright,” he concedes. “I feel like I've been flattened beneath a cargo crate. And,” he adds hastily, “very surprised to see you. How did you even get in? The Masquerade is tomorrow; the palace must be mobbed by now.”

“Oh, that was easy,” she says, grinning. “After all, what good is my magic if I cannot use it for something as simple as sneaking undetected through the halls of tyrants?” He is still holding her hand; she runs her thumb over his, stroking gently. “I am gladdened to see you—I was so worried about you. But you seem in much better fettle than I expected.” The concern has not left her gaze entirely, but the panic (which she had tried to hide, cleverly, though he had seen through her act) with which she had entered seems to have lessened, some. “Let's see what I can do for you though, shall we?”

Aredhel stands only to close the door to the cell, before coming back to the bench and emptying half the contents of her bag: tinctures, salves, concentrates, teas. She steamrolls Ilya into submission, not unlike Mazelinka sometimes does—she gives him no chance to refuse her. She drops some kind of mixture into his eyes and their stinging begins to lessen; she rubs a salve on his scabs, the locations of which she knows without having to search, for up until recently they were wounds of her own. 

And Ilya's... conflicted. He is, firstly, so happy to see her, and to see her alive! She is so animated, so graceful. More buoyant than she had ever been in her time of sickness, and it is  _ glorious.  _ Too in awe of her to protest, he submits, yields to her care.

But she shouldn't be here, as much as he likes it. Firstly because he can't bear the thought of her being caught with him, and secondly, because he had been sure by now she'd want nothing to do with him. She should be away, spending her costly freedom in better pursuits.  _ Better off without me— _

He's rinsing his mouth with some kind of medicinal wash. After half a minute she holds out a cup to him. “Spit.”

He does. She sets the cup aside. Moving to rummage once more through her bag, she stills, uneasy. She asks, “What is it?”

It takes Ilya a minute to realize he's been staring, probably giving her his most wistful, moon-eyed expression. “Nothing,” he says, hastily. “Well, something. It's just, you look…”  _ So alive. So beautiful. Like spring on the mountains, wild flowers after winter _ . But he should not say these things; he should not encourage her affection. Instead, he tells her, “I never thought I'd see you again.”

Aredhel gives him a funny look, laying her palm over his forehead, checking to see if his fever has cooled from the herb she administered a few minutes ago. “Well, that was a silly thing to think,” she says. As if he could just run away and be rid of her so easily. Though that does beg the question of why he had run away to begin with. She hesitates, before asking him, “Why did you leave, last night?”

“I was worried that if I stayed it would only mean trouble,” he replies. He is sorry to have worried her, sorry not to have been there when she woke, but he does not regret his choice to leave. “The guards, I didn't want them looking for me at the shop. And this magic... I didn't know if I could infect Asra, or reinfect you…”

Aredhel leans back, lifting her hand from his forehead. She watches him attentively, patiently, waiting for him to get the words out. But Ilya can hardly do more than sigh, than knit his brows. He is weak, so weak—he knows it is for her benefit that he needs to push her away but it is so terribly hard.

“I'm nothing but trouble, Aredhel,” Ilya says, lowering his voice. “Even in the short while we’ve known each other, I’ve put you in danger so many times. I didn't want to do it again. And yet, here you are,” he continues, and he can’t help but smile a little at the thought. “Defying all the distance I’ve tried to put between us to protect you.”

_ Even though you should not. Even though I would rather spend the rest of my days alone than bring you so close to harm again. _

Ilya’s smile falters; he pulls away from her, widening the space between them, casting his eyes to the floor.

“Aredhel, why are you here?”

She’s glorious, alive, buoyant—but she’s skittish, too. Crouching behind an invisible armor, more guarded than she usually is around him. When he asks her why she is here, with him— _ in danger _ ,  _ again _ —she freezes, struck motionless before she dodges his question. “Why wouldn’t I be here?”

A realization—a small horror—begins to dawn on Ilya.  _ Does she still not know? _ Has she come all this way to save a man she still thinks—mistakenly—to be some paragon of goodness? “Didn’t you talk to Asra?”

Aredhel huffs, raising an eyebrow. “‘Talk’ is too generous a way to describe it. I scolded him… perhaps too harshly. But I was so worried about you.”

_ Still am _ . He appears to be in no immediate danger, but she doesn’t like the idea of him being locked down here ( _ no matter, she’ll free him _ ) nor does she like the mark he bears, the press of dark magic upon him. If she could, she would lift it from him now. But she’s not sure that wouldn’t kill him, plague-sick as he is, and there are… other considerations.

Asra has had to unlock his gate to cast this spell on Ilya. Aredhel will have to pay her own gate a visit to unravel the magic, to begin to understand it, and she… can’t bear to do that. Not today of all days, not tonight, not yet.

(This, Asra does not know: Aredhel is a coward. She has not visited her gate in months. She will not be able to avoid it for long but now, here, with Ilya, she prefers not to think about that inevitability.)

Ilya has pulled away from her, withdrawn; she will pull him back. Again she reaches out for him, cupping his cheek before tangling her fingers in the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “I hate that he has done this to you, but he has done a good job,” she tells him quietly, eyes wandering once more to his throat. “The magic seems to have stopped the spread of the plague, or at least slowed it, for now. Not the most elegant work, but effective—you’ll be alright for awhile. Long enough for me to—”

It is too much for Ilya. This fondness, this affection—undeserved. “Aredhel…” he breathes her name into the space between them, a trembling sound. Shoring up his strength before he tells her, “Please. Stop.”

He reaches behind him, untangles her fingers from his hair. When he releases her wrist her hand floats in the air, hovering, as though, now that her hand is free, now that he has discouraged her from using it to touch him, she is no longer sure what to do with it. This time she does not try to conceal the hurt nor the confusion in her eyes.

And oh, how it wounds him, to see her look at him like that.

He swallows, but the lump building in his throat makes it difficult.

“Come on, Aredhel,” he says quietly, trying not to sound too bitter. “Let's not fool ourselves. Surely now Asra has told you what I am—what I have done.”

That’s enough to rile her up. Her face transforms from a look of hurt to one of anger, frustration—her old defenses—and straightens, her expression hard.  _ No. _ Whatever this is, whatever Ilya is doing, he does not get to tell her she is  _ foolish _ for caring for him. Not after what he has done for her.

And she cares not for whatever bickering may have transpired between Asra and Ilya last night. More likely than not, it was petty. “Why would I pay attention to anything Asra has said about you?” she asks, tersely. Again, she reaches for him, framing his face with her hands as she shakes her head. “Why would I listen to  _ anything _ he says when he—especially after he….”

Again, her eyes pick out the space where the mark had lit up upon his throat, fixated on that space of skin. She looks… so distraught. Ilya is not surprised—Asra had warned him she would be upset. Aredhel’s eyes glaze over, lost in some distant memory or introspection, remembering her morning with Asra,  _ pink lather on the card table— _

Ilya must make one thing clear: this was not Asra’s fault.  _ As usual. _

“Aredhel,” he says, raising his hand to wrap his fingers around her wrist. This time however, he makes no move to pry her palms from his face. “This wasn’t Asra’s fault. I asked him to do it, knowing what it might mean. I wanted— _ needed _ to…” make up for his mistakes, yes, but it’s more than that. The real reason is far less noble. Less righteous. He has saved her out of selfishness, because he could not bear to watch her light be extinguished—the pain of that, he had been certain, would break him. “I could not let you go, not if there was a chance I could help you. The cost was irrelevant. I would make the same choice over without reservation.”

_ So stupid _ . He is so reckless and stupid, and she is so deeply in love with him. “Thank you,” she says. Her fingertips trail down his sharp cheekbones, along his jaw, down to the skin of his throat. “I will fix it,” she says, and though her voice is hardly more than a whisper her expression is one of steely determination. “I will find a way to take this magic off of you. You do not deserve it, this pain, for an act so selfless.”

If Ilya harbored a sneaking suspicion before, now he is convinced of it— _ she does not know. _ Asra has not told her nothing of Ilya’s darkest sins, the hours spent below the dungeons. Which, really… Ilya should have expected. That is  _ just like _ Asra, champion of integrity that he is. So principled, unwilling to throw his rival under the bus even though he had the tools to do so. No, Asra has held his tongue, left the ball in Ilya’s court. He will have to come clean to her himself. A part of him is tempted to tell her nothing—if he keeps his misdeeds to himself, she will have one less cause to leave him—but he knows that he cannot allow the lie to fester any longer. Even if it is an agony greater the the plague, to watch the horror transform her face the way it had changed Asra’s when she begins to understand  _ exactly _ how wrong she was about him.

He pulls away, enough to dislodge her hands from his space, to widen the space between them to something less intimate—though not far enough to escape the range of her hand if she wishes to strike him. She very well might—he will not blame her. Will not shrink from the blow.

“You think I am so good,” he begins, his upper lip twitching into a half-sneer. “So selfless. Really though, Aredhel,  you don’t know the first thing about me. It’s time we stopped pretending.”

Her eyebrows arch—first in hurt, then confusion—then she shakes her head, leans closer to him, opens her mouth as though she is going to protest; Ilya does not give her the chance to get in a word.

“I put you in danger. It is my fault you were taken to the Lazaret, and if we had not gotten you out in time, Lucio would have…” he scowled, turned his eyes away from her. Now that it has come to it his tongue is reluctant and stubborn; he can feel his chest tightening with panic. How is he supposed to describe to her the fate he nearly led her to? Caged like an animal, a  _ specimen _ , to be poked and prodded by the Quaestor until she perished and then sliced open like nothing more than meat. (Or, heaven forbid,  _ before _ she died, strapped to the table so that she cannot struggle as they open her from her collar to her navel—Valdemar was developing a liking for vivisection.)

Perhaps, if he merely pushes her away, he will not have to tell her the full story. “Now that you’re better,” he tells her, “there’s no reason for us to continue this charade.”

Aredhel is studying him. She looks, if not dispassionate, withdrawn; she has drawn her armor around her. “Charade?” she repeats, her voice deadpan.

Ilya is brave enough that his gaze does not waver when he speaks, when his tone turns chilly. “You should go back to the shop. Asra will be looking for you—I am sure he is worried about where you’ve gone.”

Aredhel pulls the inside of her cheek between her teeth, pinches it between them. She will not give him the satisfaction of seeing how deeply his words have hurt her. But it makes no sense—why would he have risked his life to save her if he did not care for her? His demeanor has changed completely since she arrived, when he had looked so pleased, so  _ thankful _ to behold her, all goofy and awestruck as she’d treated his sickness. Why is he pushing her away now?

His mixed signals assail the walls of bravery she'd built up so carefully as she had made her way to the dungeon. Anxious though she had been, Aredhel had steeled herself for what she would find here, how weak or ill she may have found Ilya upon arrival. But she had not, really, prepared for  _ this. _

She has slipped into the palace like a whisper. Glamours, taking on shapes, tinctures and teas—all that is easy magic. But being honest? Being open, making herself vulnerable? This is something she has had far less experience in. It frightens her, the task before her—how to put to words the way he makes her feel? And how not to break, if after he pushes her away from him still?

It is a miracle, really, that she’d ever had any sort of functional romantic relationship with Asra, and the fact that they made a go of it for so long was a testament to Asra’s empathy and patience. He had made her feel safe, comfortable, cared for—for a time. Though it was clear to her that whatever she had shared with Asra was over, no matter what was about to happen with Ilya.

This, too, might end in failure. It is, she recognizes, probably the wrong time to confess her feelings. In the clammy dark, in the dungeon, and Ilya, ill—but if she does not tell him now, then when will she? She cannot wait. He has given her a second beginning, a new life, and she wants to start it knowing what that means.

_ You know that I love you, don’t you? _ But would he still? What if he had not meant it, a white lie meant to bring her comfort, to coax her from the cold of death? What if he no longer did?

She reaches up to fiddle, anxiously, with Brona’s comb. The ornament barely holds in her hair—it is so short now. She had shorn it all off in a fit of pique once she'd gotten sick—cut so sloppily it had left her scalp bleeding and Asra, when he had found her, had to finish the job for her. But still the comb sits, clings to the golden hair it holds in its teeth.

Aredhel still remembers with perfect clarity the first time a customer came into the apothecary and mistook her for Brona’s daughter. And Brona, sharing a warm look with Aredhel out of the corner of her eye, had not bothered to correct them.  _ You are so welcome here, _ her eyes had said.  _ You are as good as mine. _

How warm it had made her feel. How loved, to feel like she belonged.

Being with Ilya… it does not make her feel quite the same way, but it is close. It is a light, a love, a warmth she wants always to bask in. And yes, the immensity of the feeling (as well as the task of confessing it, and how terribly painful that may be if Ilya rejects her) makes her frightened. But she owes it to herself to know if this is real.

Aredhel is quiet, contemplating something—Ilya only watches her, watches the retinue of emotions play across her face, shifting too quickly for him to pinpoint any of them with precision. But then she sets her mouth in a determined line, presses towards him, drawing near to him again. She throws one of her legs over his, and draws herself over his thighs, hovering just over his lap.

And oh,  _ oh _ , he is weak, he is ill-prepared—he gasps as she takes his head in her hands, forces him to look her in the eyes as she strokes the high planes of his cheeks.

Her eyes— _ so white _ ! Her irises as green as a summer they’ll never know.

His eyes—silver grey in pools of blood red, and looking only at her. He is hardly breathing, barely moving, and has made no move to extricate her from his lap. Aredhel gathers her courage; she takes a deep breath.

“Asra can look for me all he wants,” she begins, slowly. “Worry as much as he cares to. He might find me; I won’t hide. But I….” Her voice trails off; her fingertips flutter down his cheeks and along his neck to his shoulders, winding themselves in the oversized collar of his modern undershirt.

“I’m not leaving you again,” she says, firmly, meeting his eyes. “Not unless you ask me to go.”

Is she—she can't be saying what he thinks she is. If she is really—if he wants—and how is he supposed to rebuff her, now? Surely he is not strong enough. “What, uhh… what’s—what are you talking about?” Asra is still her apprentice. They share a business—a home!—years of companionship, and so she really can't be suggesting.... “Asra, isn’t he—he’s your apprentice, shouldn’t you—”

She’s still a little nervous—he can tell by the shallowness of her breath—but still she lifts an eyebrow, wryly, her thumb tracing a line down the column of his throat. “If he can work out this magic on his own he is no longer in need of my guidance,” she tells him, quietly, matter-of-factly. “He does not listen to me; he will not benefit from my instruction. I don’t even know what I would teach him, now, and I don’t—”

But then she shakes her head, sighs.  _ This isn’t about Asra. _ What she wants to tell Ilya—the life she wants with him—it has nothing to do with Asra. And after last night, she is tired of spending her time with Ilya wondering what will become of Asra, what Asra thinks of their courtship.

“I don’t want to stay here, anymore,” she confesses. “I want to leave Vesuvia.” When Ilya does not respond right away, she adds, nervously, “With you. If you’ll have me.”

Ilya blinks at her stupidly, jaw slack, mouth open. This is not the turn he had thought their conversation would take—it is decidedly the  _ opposite _ of what he had set out to achieve when he had tried to push her away from him—but he’s not sure whether, for his part, he should consider that a great failure or a great success. And the way she’s looking at him,  _ anxious _ , as though she fears he might reject her—“Is that—is that a joke?” he asks her— _ if he’ll have her? _ He cannot think of anything else he would rather have; would ask for nothing else for the rest of his sorry life if by some miracle she chose to pledge herself to him.

Aredhel worries her lip between her teeth, shakes her head,  _ no. _

“When we were out on the lagoon… you asked me what would happen if I got better, and I had no answer for you. I was too certain that I would not recover. But now I have.” Her gaze darts between his eyes and his collar, the dark hair on his chest that teases her eyes lower, past the fabric of his shirt.

“I know,” she says, laughs uneasily, “I  _ know _ this has all happened so fast. You are right—perhaps we don’t know each other as well as we could. But I know you well enough to be certain: this new life I have been given, I want to spend it with you. Traveling, adventuring, doing all the things you promised we’d do as we came back from the Lazaret.” She winds her fingers tighter in the fabric of his collar, as though she fears he might bolt from her. Swallows.

“I want to run away with you. If you’ll come with me.”

Ilya is stunned, speechless. For as surely as he has fantasized about the life they might share, he has  _ never _ dared hope for it. There always seemed to be too many things standing in their way: her illness, her business at the shop, Asra. Running away with her… it was a dream. He had been resigned to the fact that it would never be more than that.

But now, she is hovering in his lap, her hands on him, asking,  _ come with me…. _

It is too much, a blessing Ilya knows he does not deserve. He should tell her, confess—if they are to have any kind of life, it cannot begin with so heinous a lie—but then he realizes she is staring at him anxiously. And though he finds her anxiety hilariously misplaced (has he ever given her cause to doubt his devotion to her?) he realizes has done nothing to assuage it; he is so floored, so  _ flabbergasted _ that he has not really given her an answer.

“Yes. Anywhere,” Ilya tells her, the words rushing out of him so quickly they sound breathless, light. “I’ll go anywhere, follow you anywhere, I’ll—”

He catches only the briefest glimpse of relief on her face, and then she is upon him, like she had been that night in the boat. Her fingers are soft on her jaw as she tilts his head up to meet her kiss. 

She kisses him so sweetly, so gently—his confession dies before it reaches his lips. Perhaps she thinks he is something he is not—good, selfless, kind—but he can become those things, for her. He will make himself as good as she thinks he is, as good as she deserves. He will earn her affection, become worthy of the faith she has placed in him.

He will start by finding the cure; if he is to leave this city, he will leave it healed. And once the plague is over he will run away with her—away from Lucio, from Asra, from Valdemar—leave all their mistakes behind them in the dust and start over somewhere new. Build something warm and good for themselves.

And no matter how it seems, irrational or irresponsible, to fling himself into this, he just feels… sure. He thinks of himself as a boy of fourteen, gangly, picking fights with burly thieves. And the truth is, he has always been like this. Impulsive. Always ready to throw himself right into the thick of things… if he knows it to be right. 

_ And this—being with her—is right. _

Aredhel feels it, too. The kiss is gentle—almost timid, compared to the hungry embrace they had shared out on the lagoon—but it feels like belonging, a promise. A warmth like the kind she had felt with Uncle Albert and Aunt Brona, before Brona had fallen ill, before the house had closed itself to her, drawn up its secrets and become more  _ house _ than  _ home. _ She loves him, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. She loves him. She has loved him, maybe, for a long time, though she was not brave enough to listen to the voice inside her that whispered, ‘ _ desire. _ ’ But she can hear it now. It is singing, singing of her want for him, and of every kiss that sates it.

But then—bereft!—she hisses. Ilya has drawn away from her. His lips, once pliant, stretch into an amused grin. “‘ _ If you’ll have me _ ,’” he repeats, his tone teasing, running his hand through her hair, cradling her neck. “As though I would deny you, as though for even a  _ second _ I would consider leaving you behi—”

Aredhel is too eager, too hungry, so full of desire that she does not know how to deny it; she recaptures his lips before he has a chance to finish his sentence. But soon she splits the kiss with a grin of her own, her fingers stroking the strong lines of his jaw.

“You can tease me about it all you want later,” she says, before her tone takes a turn towards the sultry, “but right now, I am going to finish what I started in that goddamn boat.”

And then, for good measure—to make her intent perfectly clear—she ducks her head beneath his jaw and presses a rough kiss to his neck. Ilya gasps, wraps his arms across her back and holds her close—groans, long and low when she catches his skin between her teeth and tugs.

Ilya’s pleasure sounds only encourage her. Her hand slides into his hair, guiding his head to the side so she can scrape her teeth along his neck, behind his ear. Ilya’s hands seize fitfully at her dress. Then fist in the grey fabric, tugging more purposefully, prying her away from him. When she extricates herself from his neck her lips are wet and red. She gives him a questioning glance; he returns it with a suffering look.

“Aredhel, we can’t, we… we shouldn’t.”

She tilts her head to the side. “And why is that?”

The indecision, the reluctance, is plain on his face. And even as he speaks, his hands fist in her dress, as though they itch to draw her close once more. “I’m so sick,” he says, his voice low, sorrowful. “I don’t know if I—I cannot,  _ will _ not, make you fall sick again.”

A smile breaks across her face. “Oh, is that it?” This particular fear is one she can easily assuage. “No need to worry, Ilya,” she croons, lowering herself into his lap, moseying closer. “What you have, it’s not catching.”

He bites his lip to stifle another groan as she presses her mouth, open and hot, to the notch at the corner of his jaw where his pulse flutters. “Aredhel, are you  _ sure _ ? Asra cast this magic, and even he couldn’t say for certain—”

Aredhel pulls back, only far enough to look him in the face. “I am not unfamiliar with the kind of magic he has cast.” Then she sighs, stroking his cheek with her knuckles. “Trust me. You have given me a great gift—I would not squander it on a whim. But lying with me will not make me sick; and I want you very, very badly.”

_ Fuck _ . He  _ wants _ to believe her, but the prudent thing to do is probably to be cautious. There’s molten in the way she’s looking at him, though, and it makes his pulse pound, his blood rush. “Okay,” he nods, “yes.”

She wastes not a minute before she crashes against him again. Her hands come and clench around his forearms, tight, tight; and it  _ hurts _ , gods, it hurts. The plague has made him sore and too-sensitive, and even the barest squeeze of her hands leaves him shuddering. But it is a sweet ache, and every time she gropes him or bites him it leaves him feeling as bright and brilliant as stardust.

She tightens her grip on his arms—a moan escapes him. And it must sound particularly pained, because Aredhel freezes.

“Is that—are you—” But she must see the look on his face, must know well enough what it means. She keeps her eyes glued to him as, cautiously, she grips her arms once more.

Ilya bite his lip—keens. “ _ Good _ .”

Her lips twitch into an uncertain smile. “You like it? It’s not too rough, too much—”

“Yea—yes,” Ilya says, nodding his approval. “Tighter. Don’t let go of me.”

Her grin only widens. “I won’t,” she promises, curling closer to him. “Never again—I will not stand to be parted from you again.”

She will bind herself to him; give herself to him wholly, unreservedly, without the hesitation with which she has always loved others. What has made her so bold? Death has transformed her; she has become, against all odds, a  _ romantic. _ In all those days, in all that sickness, Ilya was a bright and gentle light, a full moon glow, beautiful and rare… the thought of leaving with him, being with him, not just over a few scattered evenings but  _ always _ , fills her with a bubbling—

“Aredhel,” he whispers her name between them, a desperate sound. “‘Red, you really shouldn’t be here. If Lucio catches you down here with me—”

Aredhel cannot help it—she laughs. “Lucio? Let him catch me—someone needs to put him in his place. I have no fear of that childish tyrant. I doubt he’s thinking of anything but his birthday. Besides,” she says, a wicked mischief in her eyes, “you don’t know this about me, but I am very,  _ very _ sneaky.”

She dips her head towards his to kiss him once more, but then, a thought occurs to her. She had been so caught up in everything (treating Ilya, confessing her feelings) that she has forgotten her own curiosity. “What are you doing down here, by the way? Why did he lock you up?”

“ _ Ah _ . Well,” Ilya begins, letting his hands slide down her sides, landing on the rise of her thighs. “He’s ill, you know—deep in the throes of the plague—and he still thinks there’s a chance I might cure him before the party. That,” he says, bowing towards her mouth again like a tree sways in the breeze, “ _ and _ he’s furious with me, for running off to see you when I technically should have been looking after him.”

She laughs, a low rumbling chuckle like distant thunder, and her eyes darken. “Naturally. Vanity and avarice have led him to lock you here. I might have known.” She runs her hand up his forearm, cups his elbow as she brushes her lips against his:

“Imagine the look on his face when he finds you’ve gone.”

Ilya’s heart sinks.

That—oh, no, that won’t do. He will love her, he will leave with her, but only after he has proven himself worthy. “Gone?” he repeats, hesitantly.

“Did you think I was going to leave  _ you _ behind?” she asks, amused. “I’m here to break you out. Return the favor, for when you snuck me out of the Lazaret.”

Ilya’s face falls. He does not want to disappoint her, or upset her. Does not want to argue with her, not now, just as they are coming together again despite the impossible odds of this reunion.

But he cannot go with her—not yet. He has work to do first. He must find the cure. He has spent the last few months telling himself that all the work he has done in the dungeon ( _ cages, vivisections, beetles _ ) was, though vile, an ‘ _ acceptable cost _ ’ if it led to a cure. What a vile man he would be, if he were unwilling to postpone their elopement to pursue a solution that is so close he can almost taste it.

No, as much as his heart longs for it, he cannot go with her, not until he can do it on the right terms.

“I can’t.”

He speaks so faintly, Aredhel almost misses the words. “Why not?”

Ilya lifts his hands and runs his fingers, gently, along her face—precious, clear-skinned, white-eyed,  _ healthy. _ He owes the whole city the second chance he gave her. “Aredhel, I’m close,” he confides. “Really,  _ really _ close, to finding the answer. A cure. I don’t know what it is yet, but now that I have the plague myself I can… feel something, inside of me. An answer.”

Her lips twitch into an uneasy smile, and she diverts her eyes.  _ Of course. _ Much as she might be ready to let the whole of the city burn and sink into the sea behind them, he is not; he still wants to help. Still, she suggests, “You can’t… do this, find a cure, elsewhere?”

“I need to be here,” Ilya says, and his tone is apologetic but equally determined.“I don’t trust Lucio, Aredhel. I have to be here, so I can put the cure in the hands of the Countess. She is a far better steward to the city than Lucio. If Nadia has the cure, I know she will see the it distributed. Not jealously guarded, or sold for profit.”

He thinks of the pits, the dungeon, the lab, Valdemar—Aredhel watches a shadow cross over his face and knows not why. But he takes her hands in his and squeezes them, imploring:

“Please. I need to do this.”

Aredhel cannot look at him. Not yet.  _ She _ has no fear of Lucio, not for herself, but still she does not like the idea of leaving Ilya under his thumb—especially under the circumstances. And she is impatient, full of exuberant and youthful love: she wants to run with him, board a ship and take to the sea and never look back.

But this is… so  _ like _ him. What she loves about him. It is his generosity, his empathy, his  _ goodness _ that is keeping him here, though she can see in his eyes that he longs to go with her.

How can she do anything but support him, if this is the path he has chosen?

Her hands return his gentle squeeze. “You can. Do this. I have always known that you could.” He hides his brilliance behind self-doubt, but she has always seen it, just the same. “You will do what both Asra and I have failed to do. And I will wait for you, until you are ready to go.”

Ilya releases a breath he had not known he was holding. “Thank you.”

“I still want you, though,” she adds, her solemnity falling away, her eyes sparkling. “I do not want to wait for that.”

But now that they are talking—now that Lucio has entered the intimate space between them—Ilya is not so sure. He remembers Ludovico’s face at the peephole; he passes a fleeting glance to the door, just to check, to make sure no one is looking in on them.  _ Absurd. _ He would have heard them coming, but still….

“Perhaps we should. Wait, that is,” he tells Aredhel, as kindly as he can. “The guards—every so often, they check on me. If they find you here—”

“If they come by,” she says, a note of exasperation in her voice, “I will simply take their memories of seeing me, and they will be none the wiser.”

She is arrogant, positively dripping with magic—and at the moment she can think of no better use for it than allowing her this tryst.

“You can do that?” Ilya asks her, his eyes going wide. “Just…  _ poof _ , like that, and they forget they ever saw you?”

Her fingers, again, find his throat. “You know as well as anyone by now the feats that can be accomplished with enough magic and will,” she says. “It will be easy.”

Yeah, sure.  _ Easy _ . Like threading a needle while hopping in place. Erasure was not the problem so much as erasure with discretion: if the spell was not performed with the deftness of skill required, such magic could leave its victims comatose. But she was not concerned about that—mostly, she just wanted Ilya to hold her. If she has to lie a little to accomplish that end, she’ll do it.

If the guards find her she will deal with them one way or another; it is as simple as that. She is alive, she is powerful; she has many tools at her disposal for dealing with unwanted eyes.

Still, she can’t help but feel a little uneasy. That is—what is it?—the second, third, or  _ fourth _ time he has tried to push her away? She loves him, she is impatient—but she will not coerce him. Everything has happened so fast. If he is not ready….

“You are thinking up a lot of reasons to say ‘no’ to me,” she tells him, gently. It is an observation, not an accusation. She pulls a little farther back in his lap, resting her weight just above his knees, giving him the space he needs if he wants to refuse her. “Ilya, if you don’t want this—”

“I do!” The answer comes quick, its urgency punctuated by the way his hands squeeze her thighs. “Believe me, I do, I just… don’t want you to get caught here.”

_ Caught. Because of me. Again. _

Aredhel grins at him. Ordinarily, she hates being coddled like this, but Ilya has only known her sick—she does not blame him for not knowing, yet, what she is capable of. “I’m a big girl, Ilya,” she says, leaning forward to press a gentle—almost chaste—kiss to his throat. “I can look out for myself.”

“Okay,” he says, and she can feel the muscles of his throat constrict under her mouth as he speaks, the rumble of speech behind the column his skin. “I want this,” he admits, “I want you.”

There it is—the permission she needs. She pulls herself out of his neck to plant one voracious kiss on his lips, before her hands find the hem of his shirt, untucking it from the waist of his pants and tugging it upwards.

“Off.”

Ilya obliges, raises his arms over his head so she free him from the shirt. A shiver runs through him as the cool, damp air meets his skin, a far cry from the heat of summer outside. A pleasurable chill—he reaches for her—

But Aredhel is frozen, staring at his chest, her expression unreadable. “Oh.”

Ilya looks down, and— _ oh _ . He swallows. He’s not exactly—well, he’s taken her sickness, hasn’t he? And so each of the once-boils, the scabs, the patches of rough skin that had decorated her body now mark his.

It is, in short, not a good look.

He is sick; he had warned her. But he will not fault her now if she would rather… if the  _ sight _ of him is just too….

He laughs uneasily, his fingers skittish on her thighs, brushing her legs as he stumbles over his words. “What—hah, uh, what are you—”

His voice breaks her trance; her eyes snap up to meet his and she colors. The most healthy, primrose pink spreads across her cheeks. She smiles,  _ bashful— _ he’s not sure he’s ever seen her like that before—before she forces a laugh to match his, a breathing ‘ _ ha _ .’

“I know—I mean, you’re sick, but you’re…” her hand lands, hesitantly, on his chest. Runs through the hair across it. Trails down his sternum, following the line of dark hair down to his navel, and her breath hitches, and her blush deepens, “you’re…  _ gorgeous, _ Ilya. Fuck, you’re so—”

And ordinarily Ilya would wait, would want to hear each word of praise she is willing to give. Now, though, he is hungry; he licks the last of her words from her with a swipe of his tongue, swallows the praise as he pulls her back into his embrace.

His breathing is broken, ragged. She yearns for him, an appetite that only increases the longer his hands are left to roam across her shoulders, her legs, her sides. And,  _ fuck _ , she wants it to be good. Wants to do all the things she thought she’d never have the chance to do: tease him ’til he begs, wrap her mouth around his cock, already straining against the seam of his pants, bury her fingers inside him and make him weep. But she has waited long enough to love him the way she wants to, and he has given her permission, and she wants, and  _ wants _ —

“Wait, wait,” Aredhel says, tearing herself from the kiss. Ilya chases her, leans towards her as she backs herself out of his lap and stands. Flushed.  _ White-eyed. _ Her skirt falls just above her knees, rubbed pink and raw from the grain of the stone bench. She dips her hands beneath the hem of her dress, lifts it….

…not quite far enough to reveal all it conceals. But when her fingers reach beneath the cloth they hook in her underwear, and when she lowers her hands along her thighs, the black lace lowers with them. When it is past her knees, she lets it fall to the floor. All the while, she only looks at Ilya, her eyes smoldering, watching the intensity of the longing that flickers across his face as she sheds her underclothes.

Ilya groans, the sound muffled, his lip held between his teeth. When she has settled once more in his lap, he slides his fingers beneath her skirt—lightly, slowly, so reverently—to feel the rise of her thighs, the curve of her hips. Her hands slip beneath her dress to find his, and she leads them to the swell of her ass, clutching, encouraging him to squeeze.

He does—and when she throws her head back, a blissful smile on her face, he lavishes kisses upon her jaw, her throat, her collar bone.

Aredhel sways back towards him, her hands running through his chest hair before she grips his shoulder, seeking purchase enough to grind her hips down against his hardening cock and he can feel her through his pants ( _ oh, fuck, she’s so wet _ ) and his jaw slackens and he gasps at the heat of her. Her breath hitches; she rubs her waist against the tent of his pants  _ just _ so and even at that faint contact Ilya sees stars.

But then he remembers. He wants— _ no _ . If he is going to do this, have this life with her, he wants to be honest. He wants to be truthful, at least, about this: about what they are about to share will mean to him. Why and how deeply it will matter. He must tell her now, before he is in too deep, over the ends of the earth, past the point of coherency.

He leans back, uses his considerable grip on her waist to still her gyrations. When she peers up at him her lips are shining, her cheeks flushed, her breathing uneven.

“I just—” he begins, but it’s hard, putting words together when she’s looking at him like that, like she’s possessed of an unquenchable thirst that only he may sate. “I have, a… uh… one question.”

Aredhel laughs. When she lifts herself, sits back on his legs, her thighs tremble, already tight, already— “Shoot.”

His hands slip from their purchase on her ass, round her waist to the tops of her thighs and trail downwards, out from beneath her dress so that they may fidget, playing, distractedly, with the hem of her skirt. And now he is coloring. He can feel the heat flushing his cheeks, and knows it has nothing to do with desire.

“How, uhh… how much do you…” he rolls the hem between his pinched fingers, once, twice, before he can meet her eyes. “Do you remember what I told you, last night? Before I….” but his voice trails off, unable to complete the thought, his words swallowed by his nerves.

Does she remember? How could she have forgotten? When she had woke this morning, it was the first thing she remembered. Before the mark on his throat, before her escape from the Lazaret, Asra, the boat, crossing the lagoon,  _ what he had told her _ had come to her with urgency, and even now, thinking of his words, her heart skips a beat:

_ You know that I love you, don’t you? _

“Ilya,” she says, softly. Takes his hands in hers, raises them to her mouth, presses a kiss to each. Holds them against her chest, pressed against her thundering heart when she tells him, “I love you, too.”

She will remember this, always, she thinks: baring her soul to him. How she feels: safe enough to be vulnerable, to unfold herself like a blooming rose, to give him her heart and  _ trust him with it _ . And how he looks at her, then: like she is an impossible thing.

How he seizes her, his hands clenched around her ass, drawing her over him. How his fingers fumble, too eager to be graceful, at the buttons at the top of her simple grey dress, tripping over themselves as they expose, inch by inch, the pale skin of her sternum, her breasts.

Nimble hands steal inside the folds of her dress, wrapping around the small of her waist, splaying across her back. His thumb drags a tortuous path up along her ribs, slow—timid?—until she seizes his wrists and guides his palm to cup her breast.

Even this simple touch is enough to make her moan; Ilya echoes her with a gasp. He is a wreck, ruined already—giddier than a teenager—he draws the pad of his thumb over her nipple and she twists in his arms, whining, her forehead falling forward to kiss his.

Ilya has dreamt of this—is that too tacky to admit? Even when she was sick, when there was no hope for him, he could not help it—after leaving her shop, he would find himself in bed, fingers teasing through the auburn hair at his groin to touch himself, picturing her face. He’d sleep and dream of her, healthy,  _ his. _

Is it too tacky to admit? “I’ve dreamt of this,” he tells her, anyway, the confession hot against her cheek.

“Me too,” she says, and though they are too close for him to look at her properly, he can feel the muscles of her face pull her mouth into a grin.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. You’d leave the shop, and I’d— _ hah— _ even sick, even aching, I would touch myself.” She keens, twists closer as he catches her nipple between forefinger and thumb. Her hand finds hers, steers it beneath the hem of her skirt. “I’d come thinking of the way your face would screw up when you’d cum, the sounds you’d make—my fingers buried inside of me—”

_ Fuck.  _ He thinks of her in that bed, big enough for her to spread out—thinks of her heels planted into the mattress, back arched off the mattress, her hand between her legs—his middle finger slips between her folds, fingertip circling her slick clit before pressing into her, sliding in to the first knuckle.

“Like this?”

“Like—oh _,_ _mmm_.” Her brow knits, her features drawn tight with pleasure. “ _More,_ two, yes, just like—oh!”

She is so wet, so ready, he works two of his fingers into her with ease . She is gripping him so tightly, one hand clenched around his upper arm, the other fisting his hair—he does not mind. She snaps her hips against his hand, riding his fingers, her mouth parted to let slip the retinue of pants and sighs and choked sobs he draws out of her when he presses the pads of his fingers against her walls and rubs.

“You—you nearly caught me once,” she confesses, in a whisper like sheer curtains tossed by a warm breeze.“I had been waiting for you, I—I was still washing the scent of my sex off my hands when I heard you come in downstairs.”

Ilya groans. “Oh, dear ‘Red, I wish I had.” What he would have done! He would have left her no space for embarrassment, no time to feel shame. Would have only shed his coat and knelt between her legs, licked the slick from her fingers before pressing his tongue to her—

But the cry she gives then! Desperate and high, tugging roughly at his hair, and he realizes how insistently his fingers are pressing. She’s still riding each thrust of his fingers, open-mouthed, swollen-lipped, nipples rosy from his earlier attention, and she looks…  _ god, _ she looks… magnificent, unearthly.

“Ilya,” she croons, breathing hard. Her hands fall to his waist, tug at the closure of his pants. “Can I—”

“ _ Yes _ .” Her hands wrap around his cock, free it from his pants. “Yes, please—”

She crosses her arms over her body and hooks her fingers into the hem of her dress before pulling it clean over her head. And then, she is bare, pale skin unblemished by sickness. Ilya drinks in the sight of her. She’s—warm skin stretched over bones, protruding at her hips, her ribs, thinned by sickness ( _ we’ll fix that, I’ll feed her, provide for her _ ) but she is perfect because she is  _ his _ . She takes his cock in hand and guides it between her legs.

The sob he makes feels like it is dragged from the depths of his soul as she sinks around him—she’s barely taken him inside of her when Ilya buries his head against her shoulder, panting. She is so warm, feels  _ too good _ —it is overwhelming. He cannot open his eyes, can barely breathe, wants nothing but to feel—she lowers herself onto him until her hips meet his and he has nothing left to give her.

Her arms wrap around his shoulders, cradles his head against her. Her lips press a line of fervent, insistent kisses along his temple. Ilya’s hands have come once more to cup her ass; beneath his forearms, he can feel a faint tremble in her thighs.

“Fuck,” he croaks, weakly, against the skin of her throat.

She laughs, lightly, her breath stirring the hairs at his temple. “Yes, I intend to.” She kisses the tip of his ear, which burns, crimson-hot beneath her mouth.

Then, true to her word, she lifts her hips to slide off of him before sinking around him once more.

Ilya groans—a strangled sound—his face still buried in her neck as she begins to ride him. His hands slide to the side of her hips; his thumbs dig into her hip bones. But as she begins to fuck him in earnest—rising, falling, drawing him closer to ecstasy with each wicked buck of her hips—his hands roam. She is exquisite, mesmerizing— _ the bounce of her tits as she rides him! _ —he cannot make up his mind which part of her he most wants to touch.

Every time her hips fall into his lap he feels like his legs are shattering; the plague ache sends a sudden onrush of anguish racing through him with every thrust. But it is good, still, too good to give up.

“ _ F-fuck,  _ ‘Red, harder—”

He asks so nicely—such a plaintive sound—Aredhel will grant him his request.

She is blissfully vacant: gone is the weight of Asra’s mistakes, and the fear of what she will leave behind, and the cold chill of her own mortality always breathing down her neck. She is empty like a clear sky, and he is the sun that fills it: all she feels, thinks of, sees, is Ilya. And he is glorious, red faced and slack-jawed, and not even the red in his eyes is going to take her down from the way it makes every part of her sing. She is alive,  _ she is alive!  _ This is what makes her grateful: the way he looks at her. Holds her. Almost too bashful to squeeze her ass and guide the thrust of her hips as she rocks them; but there is time, yet. She will teach him to take what he wants from her without reservation—she will give it freely. She can, now— _ there is time _ . Everything has been colored by that word— _ last _ —but this will not be the  _ last kiss _ , the  _ last lovemaking. _ She has been granted more time, and Aredhel is not going to waste a minute of it: she will spend all of it, as much as she can, in the company of this beautiful, tender, impossibly gentle man.

“Wait, wait—stop.”

Ilya’s voice is frantic—a little panicked. She ceases at once, eyes blown wide—he’s breathing hard, gasping for air, chest as rosy as his cheeks. His hands grip hard at her legs, holding her in place, mid-thrust.

“What is it?”

Fighting for every breath, for control of himself—pulling himself back from the brink of bliss he had been about to topple into—Ilya only looks at her.

He had been about to come—and he won't have that, not tonight. Not while she is still unsatisfied. He is going to cure himself, cure the city... begin his path towards absolution, even if it is one he suspects he will walk for the rest of his life. He will buy their freedom. He will steal her away from this beautiful, wretched city that nearly broke the both of them and start something new and tender with her.

And there will be plenty of time, then, for the kind of hard and desperate fucks where he won't hold back. God, he is going to fuck her in so many glorious, vulgar ways. She's got a look in her eye that could level a monument, and he is ready to be wrecked. At that moment his dick twitches—not because of the part of her lips or the rub of her hips but at the thought of the time he will be able to devote to learning how best to please her.

Tonight, though—tonight, and the beginning of all the pleasure and promise that awaits them, Ilya wants to be generous. 

But this is all too much to say, while he's heady and inarticulate with pleasure. So instead he quirks a lopsided grin. “Ladies first,” he tells her, and slips his hand between them, seeking out her clit between the folds of her sex.

“Ilya!”

The pad of his thumb against her pulls his name from her lips—she reaches out to grasp his shoulder, to steady herself. She's already swollen and sensitive from riding him and each time his finger circles her he leaves her more and more breathless-strangled- _ floating _ . 

She can still feel the head of his cock within her—each time a fresh wave of pleasure racks her she can feel herself clench around him—but god, his fingers are so good, and she so desperately wants to kiss him—she frees him from her hips, presses her body to his. She tangles her fingers in his hair and wrenches his head back and devours his mouth in hers.

Ilya moans against her, quickening the pace of his fingers, matching her ferocity. “Tell me—tell me when you're close,” he murmurs, against her skin, then trails his mouth from jaw to collar, down between her breasts, catching her skin between his teeth as he goes. 

It's good, so good, but she aches for him, wildly desperate for the feel of him pressing inside her, filling her. “I am. I want—” but her confession is interrupted by a wail that reverberates against the walls of his cell. Legs trembling, she lowers her hips, seeking his swollen cock with her dripping sex. “Please, Ilya,  _ please _ —”

Ilya bites his lip, fists his cock, draws her over him—but he watches only her face, the delicious mix of twinned hunger and rhapsody and  _ relief _ as she takes him inside of her. The sound she makes is choked and wretched, but Ilya’s exclamation is loud as it is lewd, a sharp shout given up to the dark ceiling as she buries him inside her heat.

“Ilya,” she moans, weakly, rolling her hips against his, trembling at each press and twitch of his cock inside her. “ _ Ilya, _ I’m not going to last…”

“Me neither,” he gasps. “It’s okay.”

Every muscle in her body—her legs, her arms, her hips—is coiled so  _ tight _ , and every snap of her hips tows her closer to delirium. It’s everything: it’s the merciless pace she sets with her thrusting, the desperate grip with which Ilya holds her hips, the supplicating look on his face that urges her on, pleads,  _ faster, more… _ until it is too much, until the undertow drags her under, drowns her in pleasure, gasping and shaking and clinging to him as her orgasm crashes over her, his name an invocation on her lips,  _ Ilya, Ilya, Ilya. _

She fucks him through her orgasm, her rhythm sloppy but her praise of him unwavering. She threads his name between curses and keens and other pleasure sounds and it is this, more than anything else—his name on her lips, stretched airy and thin—that drags him over the edge with her.

He calls out her name, hands in her hips guiding her thrusts, and her, trembling and fucked out and spent around him—and there is no pain in that moment, only sweetness, each part of him bubbling and singing like champagne. And Aredhel— _ bless her _ —weak as she is with pleasure continues to thrust haltingly in his lap nonetheless until he has spilled the last of his seed; until he begins to soften, until each thrust begins to ache; and only then, when he implores her to stop, does she still.

He is weak, plague-sick, but he takes her in his arms nonetheless, lifts her and arranges her limbs so that they share the bench, lying lengthwise side-by-side. It is a narrow space, but that is no matter: Ilya wraps his arms around her and clutches her to him, their legs tangled, Ilya’s nose buried in her hair. In the close walls of his cell their twinned breathing seems so loud.

It is almost  _ too _ tight, the way he holds her, but Aredhel doesn’t mind. After coming as hard as she had—the world slipping out from beneath her, pitching her into a white-hot abyss of pleasure—it is good, to be held. To feel secure. Her body still twitches with aftershocks of her orgasm, little pops of pleasure in her thighs, her calves. She stretches her legs, pressing her toes against the tops of Ilya’s feet.

Perhaps, she thinks, lying beside him, all of this—her illness, Asra’s betrayal, and Albert’s before that—has been worth enduring, for it has brought her here, every part of her a-sparkle. Sunk deep into some kind of impossible, impulsive love she never thought she would have.

His breathing slows, gradually; she lays her hand flat on his chest, above his heart, feeling each fluttering beat.

“Where will we go?”

Above her, Ilya cracks an eye open, a dazed smile on his face. “Dear Aredhel,” he sighs, loosening his grip on her so that he can look her in the face. “That depends entirely on you. What do you want to see?”

She  _ beams _ at him. “I have dreamed of wandering through the giant oak forests of Hjallnir.”

Ilya hums—she can feel his chest vibrate under her palm—and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Then that is where we’ll go,” he says dreamily, trailing his fingertips along her arm. “But we’ll take the long way—there’s so much I want to show you. We’ll hop off a boat near the Moonglow Mountains, where the thick rain covers the mountain side in roaring blue falls, and when the stars come out they make the water shine like silver.”

It sounds magic, lovely—too good to be true. Her smile widens. “And then back on the boat?”

Ilya mock-scoffs at the suggestion. “If we do that, we’ll miss my favorite pub. Just off one of the imperial roads, between Hjallnir and Drakr. The cook there makes the most tantalizing stew, but you have to bring her the mushrooms yourself, so we’ll spend the day before wandering through the glens, hunting in the fog coming in thick off the bay.”

His eyes soften; he lifts his hand from her arm to run his knuckles gently over her cheek, still rosy with exertion. He is heady, giddy, post-coital,  _ in love _ ; he is the luckiest man in the whole city. “It will be nothing but adventures,” he tells her. “Helping people when we can. Seeing— _ everything. _ A little bit dangerous, too, but I will protect you,” he promises, bringing her hand to his mouth to press a kiss to each of her knuckles. “Always. From everything.”

And in all the time she’s known him, loved him, it has never felt so good to be held by him as it does now when he is talking like this: painting their future, promising her of all the places he’ll take her, the things they will share.

Soon—but not yet. He is adamant about finding his cure first. And actually, to that end….

“I brought you something.”

“Oh? A surprise?” he asks. She nods.

She moves to extricate herself from his arms, but Julian whines—she yelps in surprise and delight as he pulls her back, flush to him. She flashes him a gentle, reproving look over her shoulder, but the look he gives her is innocent as can be. Laughing, lightly, she dangles her arm off the stone bench, hands fumbling across the floor until they find the fabric of her bag and drag it onto her stomach.

From within its depths she withdraws the small pot she had purchased at the market; she hands it to him, along with a bag that contains satchels of coffee she’d stolen from her kitchen.

“I know how you need your coffee,” she tells him, passing the present to him. “This pot will keep water warm enough to brew it.”

Ilya takes the satchel of grounds, presses it to his nose, breathes in deep. The sound he makes is nearly as obscene as the groans he’d made as he came. “This is just what I needed,” he tells her, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Thank you.”

A change comes over him: his face looks pinched and pained before he releases it, but it leaves him looking sad. “I wish you could stay,” he confesses. He is steadfast—he will not leave the castle until his task is complete—but still, he wishes he did not have to be parted with her.

“I know. I feel the same. But  _ you, _ ” she says, tilting her head to press a kiss to the bridge of his nose, “have work to do. And when it is done there will be nothing left to come between us.”

Ilya bites back his grin, combing his fingers through her hair.

“I can’t wait.”

It’s some time, still, before she’s able to depart. Twice more she tries to pull herself away from Ilya’s embrace; twice more Ilya fights to hold onto her, and she lets him. It is too comfortable, too blissful, too  _ warm— _ she doesn’t want to leave, either. But the longer the day wears on, the quieter the castle will grow, as preparations are completed for the party. She’s got magic enough to glamor herself, but still, she’d rather sneak out while the castle is busy enough for her departure to go unnoticed.

When she finally does get away, she repacks her bag hastily, slips her soiled underclothes in among her other possessions instead of pulling them back up her legs—the idea of wearing them doesn’t really appeal after they’ve been on the dungeon floor. Ilya pursues her as she makes her way to the door; he kisses her once, twice,  _ thrice _ before she pulls away, giggling, pressing one final kiss to the tip of his nose.

“I will see you soon, Ilya, beloved.”

The affection— _ beloved _ —melts him, leaves him swooning and pliant enough that she is able, at last, to make her departure.

The door closes quietly behind her. And in the privacy, once Ilya can no longer see her, she runs her hands up her throat, into her hair— _ elated _ . The future looks brighter than the sun—she can hardly dwell on it for long before it is too much, and she has to pull away. It has been a long time since she has felt so hopeful. So  _ happy. _ She’ll have a spring in her step, once the ache of the sex leaves her thighs—

But at the end of the hall, as she rounds the corner into the corridor that leads to the stairs, she turns so quickly she nearly runs herself onto the spear of the guard in front of her. Its blade flashes in the dark of the dungeon.

“Good evening, Miss Mooney.”

Her heart feels like it’s dropped from the back of her throat to the bottom of her stomach.

“The Count would like a word with you,” the guard continues, but—she notes with interest—there’s a faint tremble in his voice. “Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. I know you are a witch; I have heard of your weirding ways. Don’t try any funny—”

_ Crack. _

It’s nothing lethal—just a flash of light—but it’s enough to startle him. It’s enough, too, to arouse Ilya, who she can hear, faintly, shouting through the door to his cell:  _ “Aredhel! Are you alright? Is everything— _ ” but she can’t worry about him now. The flash has given her enough of an opportunity to charge past the guard, knocking him right on his ass. She flees past him, deeper into the dungeon.

She should—gods,  _ fuck,  _ she’ll have to wipe his memory after all, won’t she?  _ Whatever. _ Now that it’s come to it, she’s not sure she can really pull it off. But she’s always thought well on her feet. She’ll lead him deeper into the prison, further into the darkness, she’ll—

She makes a sharp turn down another hall. She can hear the guard behind her stumbling to his feet, then following her, in hot pursuit. But she’s out of his sight, she thinks, for the moment—she ducks into one of the open cells, leaving the door slightly—inconspicuously—ajar behind her.

Her heart pounds madly in her chest. Each footfall as the guard advances grows louder; she watches the light leaking beneath the door until she sees his shadow cross it. Then, when the guard has past, she leaps out behind him, hexes him with a gesture and a shout.

The guard crumples, his shoulder black and withered.

Aredhel grins.

She’s breathing hard—the sudden appearance of the guard had really scared the shit out of her—but she’s got him now, right where she wants him, and with plenty of magic to make him forget he ever saw her. He’s moaning, clutching his shoulder—she takes her time as she saunters over to him. Her hand winds into his hair, and tilts his head back to face her. “Do not fear,” she croons, placing her thumb between his eyes, drawing upon the reserves of magic that will wipe all trace of her from his memory.

She is young, arrogant, potent.

She is already picking out the words she will use to console Ilya— _ see? I told you I could take care of myself _ —when the blow of something hard and blunt meets the back of her head, and she crumples, her vision black.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N; god, this chapter was like twice as long as I thought it would be but there you go, Julian wouldn’t shut up. 
> 
> and listen there’s no canon evidence that the war elephant was lucid’s but can you imagine? can you imagine?? julian stole his elephant and his arm no wonder Lucio has a Grudge.


	10. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boots that come to stand before her are polished to such an impossible, absurd shine that she can see herself reflected in them, though the vision is distorted by the curve of the leather. Slowly, sluggishly, Aredhel tilts her head upwards, eyes trailing along legs clothed in the finest white satin. A sword hangs from a belt of fine leather, protected in a jewel-encrusted sheath. Above the belt an is an impeccably tailored and garishly adorned crimson tunic, detailed in gold, and then—
> 
> …Ah. Shit.
> 
> There is no mistaking the face of the man grinning at her: he has taken great pains to be recognizable, having commanded his visage to be emblazoned on banners and tapestries and statues all across the city. With his slick blonde hair and the war tattoos that circle his red eyes, he can be none other than Count Lucio himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Mild violence and intimidation, brief allusions to medical vivisection, sadism, most characters having some kind of mild anxiety/panic attack, Lucio's humiliation kink makes a brief appearance
> 
> A/N: little bit of retcon here: I wrote a version of Valdemar for an earlier chapter where he was kind of a short, beardy, bitter old man? Unsurprisingly, the dev’s version is better! So this update features my take on ‘canon’ Valdemar, with correct pronouns (they/them.) Eventually I plan to go back and rewrite those earlier sections to better reflect canon Valdemar’s characterization, but for now I kind of just want to move on with the story, and I think you’ll find canon Valdemar works much better for their brief scene here. :)

 

It has been nearly a week since Mazelinka last saw Ilya Devorak. 

By itself, this is not sufficient cause for concern. The work Ilyushka is engaged in at the palace—working tirelessly with the others to find a cure for the plague that has so poisoned and ravaged this city, seeking a way to heal—it is important. No doubt this endeavor, urgent as it is, preoccupies Ilya's thoughts and keeps him busy. 

Then again, Mazelinka knows as well as anyone that Ilya is a flightly, slippery boy; it could be his work that has distracted him, or it could be a thousand other things. More likely than not, he has a new paramour—perhaps a certain magician?—and so he has forgotten all about their shared card games and Mazelinka’s hospitality, her door always opened to him, a seat always available to him at her table. 

But Mazelinka is not bitter. _Good for him_ , she thinks. _The boy deserves some light in all this darkness._

More concerning than his absence from her home, however, is his absence at the tavern. Since arriving in Vesuvia, Ilya has always made a point of dropping by the Rowdy Raven once or twice a week, no matter how busy he otherwise finds himself. Though he claims it is for ‘cards’ and ‘drink’ and ‘good company,’ it is no secret he is really their to check in with his neighbors in the South Quarter, and provide what medical assistance he can to those who have fallen ill-whether from the plague or some other malady.

Mazelinka has lived many years, however, and knows better than to waste her energy worrying about something that may be nothing. Any day now he might walk through the door, all smiles (charming and goofy in turn) and apologies for his absence.  So Mazelinka will not worry until she has cause to do so.

But on the first morning of the Masquerade—the birthday of that good-for-nothing Count—her fears prove themselves to be well-founded.

Most mornings, after her errands in the market, Mazelinka stops in the Rowdy Raven—less to quench a thirst for drink than a hunger for good company. No matter the hour there are always neighbors in the pub, lingering in the hours before noon, playing cards, gossiping. Normally the chit-chat, while informative, is not particularly pressing. ‘I suspect Sasha will ask Nikita’s father for permission to wed her before the spring,’ or, ‘Gennadi’s mother is ill—he’ll probably take one of the next ships back to Nevivon to care for her.’ But the first morning of the Masquerade, when Mazelinka eases herself onto a wooden bench with a satisfied groan and asks to be dealt in to the next hand, she is met with grave news.

“Did you hear the Palace Guard came into the quarter two nights ago and took away Ilya Devorak?”

…Mazelinka is far too old for this sinking feeling, like her heart has fallen straight through her stomach and, instead of pulsing, is only fluttering limply somewhere between her toes.

“Two mornings, more like,” another of the locals says, his words grumbled around the stem of his pipe. “The sun was just beginning to tickle the sky when they started their infernal racket.”

“What did they take him for?” Mazelinka asks him. Her hand of cards lays untouched, facedown on the rough wooden surface of the pub table. “Did you hear them confront him?”

Mazelinka’s neighbor looks at her with pity; it is no secret she has warmed to the boy, developed a special fondness for him since he arrived in the city. 

(He has, in such a short time, become dear to all of them, but perhaps most dear to Mazelinka, who had taken to him like a mother to her son.)

“Sorry, Maz,” he tells her, pulling the pipe from his mouth to speak more clearly. “By the time I woke up they had already locked him inside his flat. They hemmed and hawed about what to do with him for about an hour before a pair of plague doctors came to take him away.”

“Oh no,” another gasps. “Poor boy.”

But so rich is the world in tragedy—so steeped in loss are these days of sickness, affliction allowed to run rampant through their city, stealing whatever it touches—that even the abduction of such a beloved member of their community does not disturb the other gossipers for long. Familiarity with grief thins the experience of it, and soon, the conversation turns elsewhere: who has died in the night; how little Anezka is doing now that both her parents are passed; how much longer will the Count wait before addressing the flooding, which is no doubt facilitating the spread of the plague, and has grown exponentially worse with the arrival of the summer storms. 

Mazelinka is no longer listening. Her expression turns hard—her neighbors mistake it for her poker face, but she hardly glances at the cards she holds in her hand. She loses two rounds before she folds and excuses herself, making her way through the South Quarter and back to her flat. 

Perhaps these days are so saturated with mourning and heartache that one more loss should not add so much to her burden. Perhaps she should not worry herself with things she cannot change—if what her neighbors say is true, there is very little Mazelinka can do for Ilya. But how her heart aches to hear of the mess he has gotten himself into! No doubt he is in some kind of trouble, if the Palace Guard was waiting for him at his flat... a danger more dire, she fears, than even the plague. 

Under her breath, Mazelinka curses her own foolishness. She should not have excused his absence so easily. But she had so wanted to be happy for him, to hear he hand found some peace, permitted himself the chance to feel joyful. 

Oh, if she were young and at the apex of her powers! Then not even that wretched Count’s walls could stand against her. In full possession of her old magicks, she would crash upon the palace until its gates lay twisted and crumbled before her, until this boy who she has come to love (against all better judgement and despite the warning in her heart, given his propensity for getting into trouble) as dearly as though he were her own was delivered, safely, back to her, that she might care for him. But Mazelinka is far from what she used to be, and if Ilya is to be rescued, or brought some comfort in his final hours, she will need assistance. Retrieving him is a task she cannot possibly accomplish alone. 

Once she has arrived back at her home, Mazelinka pries away the loose floorboards of her hiding hole. She has taken to using the hidden spot to secure her valuables. Her neighbors are dear and above suspicion—none of them would even think to steal from her what she would gladly give—but the Palace Guards have grown bold of late. They enter citizen’s homes and loot what they desire, using the desperation of the times as an excuse for their theft.

A “plague tax,” they call it. Pah. 

Plague tax or none, Mazelinka owns little that is worth the trouble to steal. The hiding hole is mostly empty, and the items hidden within are largely those of sentimental value: a gift from the magician who took her as an apprentice; a scrap of finely woven lace from her girlhood; a book of potions she hardly refers to any longer. But between the keepsakes and other items of personal significance is the one thing of any real value Mazelinka owns, though the bumbling guards that might seek to rob her would not recognize it as such. It is a necklace, modest in appearance: polished abalone on a loop of twine. But it is also a power source, containing such an energy that might be used for any number of arcane purposes. Certainly a magician would recognize it's worth—and, with no one else to turn to, Mazelinka will need the help of a magician. 

Bless that talkative, sentimental boy: if Ilyushka had not spent so much time mooning over Asra, talking her ear off about how talented and charming and beautiful Ilya found him, Mazelinka might never have known there was another magician in the city.

But it has been more than a week since Mazelinka has last seen Ilya—longer still since Ilya has breathed a word of the proprietor of Mooney’s Apothecary. And just because Ilya and Asra once worked alongside one another, that does not mean Asra will be inclined to help her. Mazelinka does not know how things may have concluded or continued between them—she knows, in any case, that Ilya had suspected his romantic advances were unwelcome. So she will take the power source, as incentive. 

(It is the most valuable thing she owns, and she will trade it gladly and without reservation if it means she can save Ilya from dying alone in that wretched palace, cold and uncared for.)

She folds the necklace in her spare shawl and hides it deep in her pockets, then heads out the door to make her way across the city, to Albert Mooney's Apothecary. 

 

* * *

 

It has been a full day since Asra last saw Aredhel Mooney.

After Asra had argued with her—after she had caught him with his arms yet stained with the evidence of his rite, soap bubbles gone pink with blood from the card table he had not yet finished cleaning—he had left her alone. Perhaps he had been too busy licking his own wounds to realize he should have followed her, or watched her more closely. But when he had leaned to her to kiss her cheek—to feel her flesh, not hot with fever nor damp with sweat but warm, healthy, pink!—she had pulled away. In all the time since Ilya had come into their lives, this is the first time she has ever withheld such affection from him. A line drawn clearly in the sand.

Asra had expected Aredhel to be angry with him. He suspected she might be angry at him well into the future, carrying the bitterness of his betrayal like a shard of glass in her breast. Still, Asra wanted to speak with her: to defend himself and his choices. But after she had pulled her cheek away from his embrace, he told himself that such discussions could wait; she needed time, he reasoned, to come to terms with what had happened to her. After all, it must be quite the head-spin to have made peace with your death only to be pulled very violently and at the very last second from the brink of that precipice and back to life. 

(He had told himself he had given her space for her own sake, too shocked and too hurt to admit, even to himself, that he needed a moment to recover from her rejection.)

After an hour had passed, he had concluded his cleaning. The card room looked as it always had, though traces of the spent magic of the rite yet lingered, a subtle puckering in the planes of reality where he'd pulled Ilya through dimensions and into his Gate. Then Asra had scrubbed the skin of his arms so aggressively he’d rubbed his skin pink from fingertip to shoulder, wanting to be certain before he intruded upon Aredhel that not a trace of blood still lingered on him. When at last he was satisfied with his work, he had extended his arm to Faust, who had been watching him as he worked, coiled around one of the hanging glass lamps. She slithered onto his arm, giving his forearm a fond squeeze before making her way up along his bicep. As he ascended the stairs to the second floor, his fingers had (absentmindedly, anxiously) caresses the cool scales of his familiar. 

 _She’s probably still angry with me_ , Asra had thought. But maybe he could begin to make it up to her—at least a little—with a hearty breakfast. For weeks she’d been too sick to stomach many of her favorite foods. In his mind he listed the ingredients they had on hand: _cinnamon, a few eggs, the bread I bought a few days ago—maybe eggy bread?_

And so engrossed was he in these domestic and culinary occupations that it took him a moment to realize that upstairs, the window was open—and Aredhel was nowhere to be found. 

On the kitchen table, a flutter of parchment, stirred by a salty sea breeze—weighted down beneath a ceramic mug was a note: _“I cannot stay here. I will return when I have had the chance to untangle how I feel, and what I intend to do about it.”_

A flutter of parchment—but now the note trembled because the hand that held it was unsteady. A faint tremor—of fear? of rage? of distress?—ran through Asra’s entire body, an anxious current that ran from his head to his toes, but he allowed it only a moment to shake him. Then, he had crumpled the note in his hand and collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs with a grunt, letting the crinkled parchment fall to the floor and covering his face with his hands.

Just like her, this is _just like her_. Aredhel should have been resting, recovering, no matter the emotions she may have had to _‘untangle.’_ A thin pretext—Asra was sure that the real reason she had left the shop was to find Ilya. But even so, if she was so worried about the doctor, why had she not asked for Asra’s help? Did she really think Asra would have refused her? Instead she had run off on her own, as though Lucio had not had her abducted once already, as though the Count would not be looking for her now since her disappearance from the Lazaret, as though all the danger was behind her. She could be so _careless_ … her brush with death had clearly taught her nothing of caution.

And so Asra had worn his frustration with her like a cloak against the concern he knew that he should (but did not wish to) feel. Careless though his master may be, she was adept with her magic, and possessed a strange kind of luck. Perhaps she would be alright—Asra resolved not to worry until he had good cause to. 

The day had worn on, grown stickier; when night descended it alleviated neither the humidity nor the heat. In darkness it had occurred to Asra once again how furious Aredhel must be with him, though he did not yet suspect her of spitting him, of using her absence to worry and punish him. For the most part, she has outgrown those old tricks of her youth.

For not the first time Asra wonders if Aredhel found Ilya—if the doctor is indeed alright. Perhaps, Asra thinks, they are only preoccupied… enjoying the pleasure of a privacy they have not yet known, indulging in intimacies that have not been available to them. The thought makes him bitter, but only a little, because the truth of the matter is that if Aredhel is with Ilya, she is almost certainly safe. After the events of the previous evening, Ilya’s devotion to Aredhel was beyond question. And Asra knows from personal experience the fierceness of Ilyas devotion, the relentless drive he feels to protect those he loves. Sick or not, Asra is sure that Ilya would not let any harm come to her.

Still, doubt nags at Asra. Something does not feel right. He cannot quite put his finger on it but, ‘trust your intuition,’ Aredhel used to say, when he was first beginning his apprenticeship with her. And Asra did. But he could not make out what his intuition was trying to tell him, it's warning vague, difficult to parse. 

Night passes, blushes into dawn. 

And now it has been nearly a day since Asra has last seen Aredhel, and doubt still unsettles the pit of his stomach, his intuition whispering a warning he still cannot quite discern. _Untangle._ But today is Lucio’s birthday—the first night of the Masquerade—and Asra must put those nameless doubts and faceless fears aside. If Aredhel really is in some kind of trouble, surely Malak would find him, warn him. Until Asra has something worth worrying about, better to focus on the matter at hand: the mysterious banquet Count Lucio has summoned him to, and what fresh dramatics it portends.

It should not disturb him so. Since he became Count of Vesuvia, Lucio has always been like this: giddy as a child at the approach of his birthday, a chance to celebrate his favorite subject—himself—in all manner of lavish and extravagant displays. But this dinner Asra has been invited to, this banquet… it feels different. If Asra has understood correctly it will be an intimate gathering—modest, for Lucio—though the size of the dinner, he is sure, is no sign of its expense. No doubt it will be luxurious, decadent, and rich as all the other celebrations, and yet… it is his _birthday._ Even on his deathbed, sick with plague as he is, it is unlike Lucio to settle for such an unassuming affair.

There are many hours, yet, before Asra must make his way to the palace; desperate for a distraction, he sets himself to the task of tidying the shop’s inventory. But the busyness of his hands does little to divert him from his suspicions, and the anxiety that grows with each hour. What has Lucio really planned for the dinner? And where has Aredhel gone? And so lost is he in his thoughts that he does not hear the knock on the door until it comes a second time, the rapping growing steadily more desperate.

Asra can be forgiven for mishearing the first time—the shop has been closed for nearly a week. When Aredhel’s sickness had worsened he had shuttered the windows and dimmed the lights; he had not wanted to spend the last of her days playing merchant. To the best of Asra’s knowledge, in all of that time, no one has looked to make a purchase. The door has stood silent. And surely it must be a customer outside, for both Aredhel and Ilya have keys of their own, and Muriel would not come into the city so late in the morning, when the streets were already beginning to swell with Vesuvia’s citizens.

Briefly, Asra considers letting the knock go unanswered. But then again, he had been looking for distractions… and the reasons he had kept the shop closed are no longer ones he need concern himself with. If someone is desperate enough to try his door when the shop is clearly closed, he can at least give them the dignity of seeing what it is they need. He sets aside the dried herbs he had been bundling, and moves to the shop’s door.

On the threshold a stranger waits for him, but it is not one of the apothecary’s regular customers, many of whom Asra can address by name. The woman before him is unfamiliar: her face is wrinkled, those lines of age now etched in patterns of anxiousness and desperation, the drawn features of her face cradled in a bright blue shawl. At her full height, she hardly reaches Asra’s shoulder.

“Good morning, Ma’am,” Asra says, nodding his head politely. “I’m sorry, but the shop is closed.”

The woman’s anxiety vanishes in an instant, and replaced with an expression of formidable determination: clearly, she is not in the least dissuaded by his words. If anything, she looks relieved that someone has answered the door… but by the fierceness of her look Asra thinks she would have stood there, knocking, waiting on his doorstep until she was greeted with an answer. 

“Magician,” she says, and the directness of her tone takes Asra aback. “I am not here to buy trinkets. Please invite me inside—I am here on behalf of Ilya Devorak.”

Asra’s face turns stony, his expression—he _hopes_ —unreadable.

He has spent, he thinks, altogether too much time worrying about Ilya Devorak. Worrying for months whether he might, in his fawning and his endless affections, discover the secret Asra kept in the second story of the apothecary; wondering, after that cat was out of its particular bag, if his mouth was going to get all three of them—Asra, Ilya and Aredhel alike—in trouble. Many of these worries have proven valid. A thousand others might still prove to be so. And Asra, more than anything else, is so _weary_ of it.

For a moment, he actually considers shutting the old woman out, but the thought quickly shames him. Whatever Ilya’s sins, this woman has done nothing to Asra. He swallows his pride and opens the door wide enough to admit her entrance. 

“I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” Asra says, opening the door and stepping back into the shop. “You seem to know who I am, but Ilya hasn’t told me anything about you.” 

“Oh? That does not surprise me,” the woman replies over her shoulder. She is already halfway across the room, inspecting the herbs and tinctures that line the shelves. As she opens one of his salves and sniffs it experimentally, it occurs to Asra that she her attitude is discerning, not curious: she is appraising his inventory—both its variety and its quality—rather than wondering about what purpose the artifacts and herbs on display might serve. “You may call me Mazelinka,” she tells him, screwing the lid back on the tin and setting it back on the shelf. “I live in the South Quarter. Ilya and I are neighbors, of a sort.”

“And you and Ilya are close?” Asra ventures. 

Mazelinka turns to him, a scowl on her face. “Close enough for me to worry when the Palace Guard comes skulking to his door and whisks him away in the night without charging him with any crime.” She sighs, shoulders sinking lower when she releases her breath. “There were four guards waiting for him, but it was two plague doctors that bore him away, just before dawn.”

Asra stiffens. “I see.” He had been honest with Ilya: the magic he’d placed upon him was untested. He had been uncertain what condition Ilya would find himself in by now, whether or not the rite would have granted him some kind of immunity from the effects of the plague. Based on what Mazelinka has told him, it seems that he has not, in any case, gotten better. “And what are you hoping I can do?”

Mazelinka’s eyes narrow at him. For a minute Asra can’t help the suspicion that she is straining her eyes to read his closely guarded aura, trying to puzzle out how best to proceed. He feels vulnerable beneath her gaze in a way he usually only feels with Aredhel, when he has tried to keep a secret from her—for example, the nature of his work at the palace, the dark magic he’d researched to save her.

“You speak dispassionately of this,” she says, finally. “Even in tone of voice. Is this because Ilya’s disappearance and illness concern you not, or because you knew of them before I came here?”

It is not quite an accusation, but Asra is silent, deciding to let her question go unanswered all the same. By now it is clear to him that Mazelinka is sort of magician herself—and a powerful one, probably, at that. In the very least she’s knowledgeable in the arcane arts. If that’s the case it seems prudent not to mention that, if Ilya is sick, it is entirely because of a spell that Asra has worked upon him.

When no answer is forthcoming, Mazelinka scowls again, waves her had dismissively at him. “Very well, young magician. Keep your secrets, if they are so dear to you. I do not wish to pry into Ilyushka’s personal life. No doubt that is a messy and difficult knot to untangle.”

Then Mazelinka reaches into the folds of her skirt, and pulls from her pockets a small object, bundled in blue cloth. 

The whole house reacts to the presence of this offering—it hushes, quiets. Silenced are the groans of floorboards and racket of glass panes rattling in their window frames with each sea breeze. The baubles and instruments that hang in the windows and chime as they catch the light and color it—silenced. It is as though the entire house is holding its breath. Asra feels it, too; whatever Mazelinka has brought into Albert Mooney’s house, it holds a power both great and highly concentrated.

She lays the bundle on one of the display cases and gently peels back the layers of cloth until the object that has so awed the house is revealed: a pendant of carved abalone, small and inconspicuous, hanging from a necklace of twine. The faint light of the hanging lamps flashes on it seductively, its many hues of green and purple and blue gleaming in the dim light.

“I will not pretend to know anything of the relationship you have with Ilya,” she says. “For all I know, things may have soured between you already. But I do not know who else to ask. I offer this artifact in exchange for your help—if you are a magician of any worth, its value should be plain.”

Asra's throats clenches, tight and dry. He feels lightheaded—he can hear (or he imagines he can hear) his pulse roaring in his veins. Though the necklace looks to be no more than a trinket, there is vast and untold power in this object Mazelinka has offered him. What he could accomplish with such power… his lips part, and his hand trembles as he reaches for it, fingertips just brushing the smooth surface of the abalone. If only he had such an artifact in his possession a few nights ago…!

But the temptation that the object inspires in him—the _voraciousness_ of the power lust—is enough to caution Asra against accepting it. Already, it seems, his quest for knowledge and power has turned someone he dearly loves away from him—the pain of Aredhel refusing his kiss pierces his heart afresh—and it is wiser, probably, not to reach for more. Instead he folds the corners of the blue shawl around the pendant, glad to have the thing out of sight, before pushing it back across the glass counter towards Mazelinka.

“I will help you, if I can,” Asra says. “No payment will be necessary. But what, exactly, are you asking of me?”

Mazelinka gives him a strange look. “Is it not obvious?” she asks. “I would like you to free him—to bring him to me, in the South Quarter. I do not wish for him to die alone and uncared for, in that palace which he despises.”

 _There’s little chance of that_ , Asra thinks. Of course, maybe the plague will kill him. It certainly is a possibility and one that Ilya was well aware of. If it doesn’t… if it doesn’t, it’s probably just as likely that Ilya will never die at all. 

But Asra holds his tongue.

“He is a good boy,” Mazelinka continues, quietly. “Foolish, maybe. He loves too much and too easily. But he does not deserve such a fate. And I would have him freed of it, if I could.”

And truly, it is not so difficult a thing, what Mazelinka is asking of Asra. With the Masquerade in full swing, the palace will be busy—plenty of people coming and going—and no doubt, whatever stunt Lucio has planned for the dinner will pull quite a lot of attention. For good or ill, it may serve as a diversion. 

But the stunt (and the dinner at which Asra suspects it will be staged) is precisely why Asra cannot free Ilya himself. His attention, he thinks, must be focused on other matters. He has seen firsthand the lengths to which death drives desperate men, and Lucio has always been a certain kind of desperate, without much of a moral compass to hold him back from his selfish aims. Still, he can send another to check on Ilya, break him out of he can… and, just as importantly, to see if Aredhel has found him first.

…Asra cannot stop but feel a bitter suspicion that if Ilya is locked away in the palace, Aredhel very well may have locked herself in with him.

And Asra knows that Aredhel is probably finished with him. Whatever future their friendship might have, it will never be what it was, lazy mornings and warm embraces, grins dopey with sleep in the dawn light, wandering hands. But she has taught him all that he knows, given him a skill, a future. He owes it to her, he thinks, to make sure she hasn’t gotten herself into danger, at least one last time. And if Lucio really is planning something for this evening, he’d prefer that neither Aredhel nor Ilya got themselves caught up in it.

So Asra reaches across the glass, and takes Mazelinka’s hands in his, squeezing them gently. 

“I will do what I can.”

 

* * *

 

_“Wake her up.”_

The sharp smell of hartshorn burns Aredhel’s nostrils. Its sting is enough to cause her eyes to water, and to pull her immediately out of the black embrace of unconsciousness that had bound her since she’d fallen in the dungeon. 

She reels immediately—some animal instinct drives her. From the moment she wakes she knows she is in danger, though she cannot quite remember _why_ she thinks that, or, for that matter, where she is or how she got there. Her limbs feel heavy, her head clouded—though she cannot name it, she knows some heavy sedative must still be making its way through her system. Panicked, desperate, she reaches for her magic ( _bursting, gushing, the font of her power opened anew since her recovery_ ) but her heart pounds madly when she finds that, through the haze of whatever sedative she has been administered, she cannot grasp it.

She is helpless—utterly defenseless.

 _Be calm_ , she tells herself. _Breathe. Panic clouds reason._

She blinks the sleep from her eyes to orient herself, to take in her surroundings, but she only finds herself in an unfamiliar room. It is windowless and dark, and it smells of sickness. Everything—from the bed to the walls to the carpet—is decorated in the most carnal shade of red she has ever seen. At least the carpet is plush—soft beneath her knees where she kneels, her wrists tied together in her lap—though subtle purple stains decorate its surface like tree rings, evidence of old stains (wine, perhaps?) never wholly cleaned away. 

She is left only a moment to orient herself and contemplate her surroundings, before an unfamiliar, nasally voice greets her by name.

“Ahh, there she is. Good morning, Miss Mooney! I never dreamed I’d have the privilege of seeing _you_ on my birthday.” 

The boots that come to stand before her are polished to such an impossible, absurd shine that she can see herself reflected in them, though the vision is distorted by the curve of the leather. Slowly, sluggishly, Aredhel tilts her head upwards, eyes trailing along legs clothed in the finest white satin. A sword hangs from a belt of fine leather, protected in a jewel-encrusted sheath. Above the belt an is an impeccably tailored and garishly adorned crimson tunic, detailed in gold, and then—

_…Ah. Shit._

There is no mistaking the face of the man grinning at her: he has taken great pains to be recognizable, having commanded his visage to be emblazoned on banners and tapestries and statues all across the city. With his slick blonde hair and the war tattoos that circle his red eyes, he can be none other than Count Lucio himself.

“A little startled, are you?” he asks, grinning so wide Aredhel thinks his smile endeavors to split his face in two: the sight of it is like light catching on a knife blade. “A little surprised? You’re in good company, then. Imagine, won’t you, how surprised I was when my guards had told me a magician had been captured in my palace—and not just _any_ magician, mind you, but the one Asra had been hiding away in his shop, the very magician who my guards had dragged kicking and screaming to the Lazaret not two days ago.” 

Lucio wags his finger at her, like a schoolmaster chastising a naughty child. “You managed to make quite a mess of the men I sent after you, you know. As a warrior, I respect that. The instinct to claw, to fight, to defend yourself.” Then his head tilts to the side, his eyes narrowed curiously. “But I am told that whatever witching ways you used, you were very, _very_ sick. By now you should be dead—or worse.”

Either Lucio moves so quickly she cannot see it, or else Aredhel is still too drugged to notice soon enough—whichever it is, Aredhel does not have time to react or flinch away before the Count’s golden prosthetic is clamped tight around her jaw, the metal digging into her flesh hard enough to sting but not enough to draw blood. 

(He is very careful in this regard, Aredhel notes. Inept as he is at leading, he is wise enough, then, to know better than to arm her with such ammunition as spilled blood, charged as it is with such arcane power.) 

Lucio tilts her head this way and that, inspecting her skin (free of blemishes) and her eyes (white) in the dim light of what she can only presume to be his bedroom. 

“Tell me, witch,” he practically purrs, “how did you manage to heal yourself?”

It is a blessing he has not administered any kind of truth serum, or else Aredhel might not be able to hold her tongue. But she owes the Count no answers and will not give them freely, no matter what he may have in store for her. As far as she knows, no one besides herself and Asra know of Ilya’s curse, his ability to heal. Aredhel will not give up his secret. Silent, she tries as best as she can through the cloud of the sedative to arrange her features in an expression of defiance.

Perhaps he had been expecting exactly this kind of rebellion, this defiance, for Lucio’s grin only widens. He turns his head to the side, speaking to one of his guards:

“Turn out her bag.”

Onto the red carpet the contents of her bag are dumped. It is mostly empty, now—much of what she had been carrying (medicinal tea, coffee, trinkets) she had left with Ilya—but she watches the guard pick through her coin purse, her key ring, various odds and ends….

…the black lace of her underwear, which she had not wanted to slip back on after she had left it lying on the dirty dungeon floor, stuffed instead into her bag when she’d left Ilya’s cell.

“My, my, what have we here?” Lucio asks, delighted. He unsheathes his sword and uses the tip to lift the undergarment off the ground so that he can better inspect it. When he turns his eyes back to Aredhel, they are shining with a wicked mix of amusement and cruelty. “Are these spares?” he asks her, taking the scabbard in his opposite hand and using it to lift the hem of her skirt.

Her hands are cuffed, and the sedative is still clouding her wit, but she is fast enough to smack the scabbard of his sword roughly away from her lap before he’s lifted her skirt past her mid-thigh. Her eyebrows knit a glower.

“Feisty!” Lucio cries, sheathing his sword. “Oooh, you are meaner than they are, aren’t you? Capable of greater cruelty—greater violence. That is good,” he croons, and reaches for her again. This time, his other arm is the one that touches her face, and though the flesh of his hand is gloved, still she can feel the heat of the plague fever that burns inside of him when his fingers caress her cheek. “So good of you, to deliver yourself to me, and save me the trouble of finding you myself.”

“Still, though,” he continues, releasing her face and straightening again, “I can’t help but be a _little_ fixated. As you can see, I am just as sick as you were a few days ago. And I’d very much like not to be. Would you really keep such respite from the Count of your city, on his birthday?”

Aredhel has despised Lucio since the minute he had come to Vesuvia. He is a corrupt leader, selfish, cruel. Even if the cure was something she could give without consequence, she would not divulge it freely. But she has not been cured through some tincture, or salve, or tea; it is Ilya, gentle Ilya, who has paid for her recovery with great sacrifice. And to give him up would put him in greater danger than he already has found himself in. Aredhel will not breathe _a word_ of it to Lucio, no matter how he seeks to intimidate or threaten her.

“Mmm,” Lucio hums, shaking his head. “I tried to ask nicely. But perhaps you need to be convinced.”

_Slap._

Aredhel’s cheek is stinging before she’d even seen Lucio’s arm lash out to strike her. She is sure of it, now—it is not only the influence of the sedative—he is _fast_. Maybe this shouldn’t surprise her. Whatever his faults (and surely they are many) he has clawed his way to the County by spilt blood alone, stronger and faster and wittier in combat than his rivals. Aredhel may disdain him, but she should not underestimate him.

She raises her fingers to touch, tentatively, at her cheek. Her jaw aches from the slap, the flesh of her cheek warm, probably red. As her fingers dance across her cheek, making sure that the force of his blow has not broken anything, Lucio crouches in front of her to stare her in the face, his forearms balanced on his knees.

“You are not very forthcoming, are you?” he says, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “But I have ways of encouraging you. If hurting you is not incentive enough, I am more than happy to hurt him instead.”

Aredhel’s heart skips a beat. She thinks of Ilya, and the dopey, lovesick grin he’d given her when they’d parted.

Then, immediately after, she thinks of Asra… not as she has these last hours, colored by resentment and hurt, but the way she used to. His warmth, his smile. And so rocked is she by these twinned fears—of any sort of danger coming to either Asra or Ilya because of her—that she is not sure she can keep the fright off her face.

“Who?” she asks, praying her tone sounds as indifferent as she has intended.

“Who?” Lucio repeats, and there he goes again, flashing his sickle-shaped grin, a weapon-grin, a grin for the mowing down of hopes. “Who indeed? The doctor? The apprentice?” His grin widens into a leer, and he leans in closer to her, favoring her with a look that is both lecherous and knowing at once.

“Does it matter, really, which one?”

So infuriated is she by Lucio’s threat that Aredhel does not think before she reacts—Lucio’s face is so close, too close to hers—she spits full in his face. Her saliva catches on his cheekbones just beneath his eyelid, before it begins to drip, slowly, down his face.

“Your highness,” she says, as answer, with curt nod of her head. 

For a moment Lucio only blinks at her, stupefied in the face of her insolence. But then, instead of turning furious—she expects indignation, steels herself for a second slap across her face—his look of shock melts into a delighted grin, and he breaks out into a long, low chuckle.

“Ooh,” he croons through the laughter as he pulls a finely embroidered handkerchief from a pocket at his breast, wiping her spit from his face. “ _Ooh._ ” He actually _shivers_ , and follows the gesture with a moan that sounds far too gratified for Aredhel’s comfort. 

“You! You’re just a little spitfire of a witch, aren’t you?” He shakes his head from side to side, like she is an incorrigible child. “You know, I usually—I usually _hate_ being wrong. I would have put good money on the bet that Doctor Jules was sneaking off, neglecting his duties to suck Asra dry. But _this_ ,” he says, gesturing vaguely with his arms, “the both of them, _you._ The drama of it! It’s so much better than I thought.”

Then he chuckles again, and his laughter draws out into a purr. “Though that reminds me—I must admit—in light of your little performance in the dungeon, your present reticence is a little perplexing. You were quite loose-lipped—quite _vociferous—_ when you were down in the dungeon with Jules. What was it she was saying, Ludo?”

He turns to the guard at his side. Whereas Lucio seems utterly at ease, a child with a present on his birthday, a cat toying with a mouse, the guard looks most uncomfortable. And when Lucio turns his attention on him, the guard goes red in the face at once.

He clears his throat, shifts his weight on his feet. “Uhh, I believe it was, ‘ _fuck me harder_ ,’ your Countship. Among other things.”

“Right, right,” Lucio nods, before turning his eyes back to Aredhel, gleaming wickedly. “Fuck me harder.”

Her hatred for Lucio roils like acid in her stomach. It makes her reckless, stupid, blind with rage—it is a good thing she is as sedated as she is, otherwise she’d be so preoccupied with getting her hands around Lucio’s throat and squeezing, she’d lose sight of the more important thing. (Namely, how on _earth_ is she going to get herself out of this mess.)

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” Lucio croons, reaching out to her again, his fingertips tracing her jawline. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. He’s cute, isn’t he? So easy to fluster, so fun to toy with.” He leans in closer to her, and as he does his hand slips to the column of her throat and tightens. 

“Disrespect me once more,” he hisses in her ear, “and Jules will never see the light of day again, witch.”

By the time he releases Aredhel’s throat her vision is blackening, and though she’d like not to give him the satisfaction she cannot help but draw a ragged gasp when she is freed, sucking lungfuls of air into her chest. Still smiling, Lucio reaches out gives her cheek—still red from his slap—a rough pat before rising back onto his feet.

“You may not wish to talk now—that is fine. I am needed elsewhere, and we’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted later. But do not make the mistake of attempting to deceive me, witch,” he warns. “I know every word that was spoken in that cell. Every word, every sigh. Every scream.” 

He tilts his head to the side, smiles again, his teeth a scythe. And, breathless, this time Aredhel finds his smile truly frightening.

“You did scream so prettily for Jules,” he says. “Perhaps later, you will scream just as nicely for me.”

Lucio lopes away, but stops on his way to the door to chat once more with the guard. Through the cloud of her panic Aredhel fights to make out his words, though the two trade in whispers. 

“Give her just enough of the sedative to make her stupid, and to keep her magic beyond her grasp, but keep her awake. Conscious enough to understand the danger she has landed herself in, but too witless to do anything about it.”

“Your Countship, is that wise?”

“Did I stutter, Ludo? Gods, I am surrounded by idiots. Get Bludmila to help you if you can’t manage the correct dosage on your own.”

So they are going to drug her again. That leaves any escape by means of magic solidly out of the question, at least for now. And Asra, she knows, is not coming for her. He won’t know where to find her, if he is even looking—if she has not hurt him so badly that he no longer thinks of her safety. Malak had not followed her into the castle, and now, she cannot call to him through the haze of the sedative. The only one who knows she has come here is Ilya, and he is imprisoned just the same… and she probably could not find her way back to him from this wing even if she did manage to escape, slow and stupid as she is. 

Gods, she really has gotten herself into quite the pickle this time, hasn’t she? The fever days must have burned away her wit.

Still, though she is frightened, she is not hopeless; spite and hate burn within her as fierce as a forest fire. Whatever Lucio is planning for her, she will not give him the satisfaction of success. One way or the other, she’ll find her way out of this.

Ilya is working on a cure, waiting for her. They are to escape, to have a life together. He’s going to take her to see the Moonglow Mountains, the Giant Oak Forest of Hjallnir, make love to her in golden fields beneath blue skies….

One thought rings clear through the stupor of the sedative: she will see the Count dead before she allows him to take that future from her. 

 

* * *

 

As he makes his way through the forest outside the city, perspiration drips down Asra’s neck and along his shoulder blades, collecting in the small of his back, dampening his shirt. So slick is he with sweat that Faust is struggling to cling to him. Coiling and uncoiling, readjusting herself, she must constantly renegotiate her grip on his shoulders so that she does not slip straight off of him.

It is one of the hottest days of summer so far, and the forest, usually cool, is uncharacteristically humid. Still, he cannot afford to slow down. If he is to reach Muriel and still make it to the palace in time for Lucio’s banquet, Asra needs to hurry.

He _hates_ having to ask Muriel for favors like this. When he placed the forget-me spell upon his friend, it was a gift, given freely. He had no intention of every using it for his own gain. Muriel had wanted to be forgotten, to live in hard-earned peace, and not to be looked at—on the few occasions that he was actually seen by someone else—the way he had during his days at the Coliseum, when he was no more than an amusement, celebrated for acts of violence he had never wanted to inflict.

(That Asra had been investigating, at the time, looking for ways to bind a certain kind of charm or magic to a host—say, for example, a kind of _healing_ —had been besides the point.)

He likes even less the fact that he must ask his oldest friend to enter the palace. It has been some time, since Asra and Aredhel have freed him from the Coliseum and from Lucio’s control, but even the mention of the Count’s name still makes Muriel uneasy. It is no small thing, to ask Muriel to go willingly into the Count’s abode, but Muriel is strong. He can defend himself, and with any luck, because of the magic Asra has wrought upon him, he’ll be able to get in and out of the castle and with no one the wiser. 

Rustling in the bushes ahead draws Asra’s attention; a second later, he can make out a shadow trotting towards him, bright green eyes searching in the dim beneath the trees. _She must have caught my scent_ , Asra thinks, as the wolf bounds up to greet him. Asra extends his hand so Inana can sniff his fingers. After, she allows him to pat her head, scratch her gently behind her ears.

“Hello, Inana,” Asra says, cheerful despite the circumstances. Inana can be quite frightening, but she’s always been sweet to him. She has always seemed to understand without having to be told the bond between Asra and her companion. “Can you tell me where Muriel is?”

A gruff voice answers, “Behind you.”

If the voice was not so familiar, Asra might have started; as it is, he has known the sound of that voice for many long years, since he was a small child. Muriel stands behind him, a hulking shadow in the forest dim. Asra smiles.

“You’re getting really good at that,” he says. “I didn’t even hear you coming.”

Muriel’s cheeks color, faintly, under Asra’s praise. His eyes dart to the side. “I’ve been practicing,” he says, with a shy shrug. When his embarrassment is passed, he turns his gaze back to Asra, his eyes curious. “Why are you here? I was not expecting you.”

Asra sighs, shifts his weight between his feet. But time is short, and no matter how reluctant he is to put his friend in this position, there’s no use hemming and hawing about it. “I need a favor,” he says, his tone already apologetic. “I’m really sorry, Muriel, but if you can, I need you to go to the palace and look for a friend of mine—Ilya—and break him out, if you can. Lucio’s keeping him in the dungeon.”

Muriel’s face is stoic. To most, it would be unreadable, but Asra can detect a faint note of annoyance in his voice when Muriel asks him, “Why?” 

A valid question. It’s been hard, in recent months, to find time to come out to the forest and visit Muriel—between working at the palace and watching over Aredhel, Asra’s been pretty busy—but the last time they’d spoke Asra may have… complained, a little, about the persistence of Ilya’s advances. That was really all it had taken for Muriel to take a dislike to him. Ever since they’d been small, Muriel had been so protective of Asra.

“Oh, well… he’s probably okay,” Asra replies, a tone only a little cagey. This is the part of the conversation he has dreaded, because even though Muriel may have a slight dislike for Ilya, it pales in comparison to the resentment he feels towards Aredhel. Things had grown a little warmer between them since Aredhel had helped break Muriel out of the Coliseum, but (Asra suspects) after Muriel is brought up to speed on recent events, most of that progress will be lost.

“I don’t think Lucio’s done anything to _him,_ not yet. But… Aredhel ran off yesterday, and I think there’s a chance Ilya knows where she is. I’m just worried she’s gotten herself into some kind of trouble.” Asra adds, under his breath, “She’s been doing that a lot lately.”

“You said she was sick,” Muriel said, his eyebrows knit in confusion. “She should be dead. How is she running anywhere?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” Asra says. “She isn’t sick anymore, but she’s kind of mad at me. She probably won’t be happy to see you, either, if you run into her.”

Muriel tilts his head to the side. “Did you heal her?”

Asra debates his answer, waggling his head to and fro before he replies, “Yes. Kind of.” Maybe not personally—maybe it had not been his hands that had drawn this sickness from her flesh—but it had been his magic that made her healing possible.

Muriel’s face pinches into a scowl. “And she’s _mad_ at you?”

Asra sighs, lips drawn into a taut line. “It’s complicated.”

Muriel’s lower lip juts out and he turns hie eyes away, green eyes gazing into the undergrowth. At first, Asra thinks he’ll let it go. But then, voice soft and sounding a little broken, Muriel says, “She’s always hurting you, Asra.”

That’s not… that’s not _quite_ true, though Asra can see how Muriel sees it that way. And Muriel will only be more convinced he’s right after he finds out what’s really been going on. “Not always,” Asra retorts, and it is a feeble defense, but the only one he can manage to muster. 

He favors his friend with an apologetic smile, reaching out to rest his hand on Muriel’s forearm. It looks impossibly tiny—like a child’s hand—pressed up against Muriel’s scars and rippling muscle. “I’m really sorry to ask this of you, Muriel. I’d go myself, but I think Lucio is planning something bad for his birthday, and I want to keep an eye on him.”

“Of course he is,” Muriel says, bitterly. Then he does sigh, and his eyes meet Asra’s. “I will do it. But for you—not for her. I just need to get some things from my hut. Protections. You go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

It is no small thing, what Asra is asking—and Muriel has agreed to help him without so much as a complaint. The strength of their friendship soothes Asra… lessens, a little, the anxiety that settled over him nearly a week ago and has not let him rest since. He flings his arms around Muriel, though they barely reach each other around the broad muscle of his chest.

“Thanks, Muriel,” Asra says, his face still pressed to the leather buckles that criss-cross Muriel’s chest. “I know it’s asking a lot. I promise I’ll make it up to you somehow, when things calm down.”

Gently, one of Muriel’s large hands comes to rest between Asra’s shoulder blades. “I would do anything you asked of me, Asra, especially if you were in need. I know the value of your friendship.” With each word Muriel speaks, Asra can feel his voice rumbling in his chest, pressed as it is against his cheek. He is thankful that he his hugging him, his face mostly hidden by their closeness, when Muriel adds: “I wish Aredhel could see the value of it, too.”

It is the kindest and cruelest thing Muriel could have said to him; the words are both precisely what he needs to hear, and also an unbearable weight, making it difficult to approach the tasks before him with a clear head.

For the first time in days (the first time since Ilya caught him crying in the shop, that night he came back into both their lives, when things had seemed calmer, all three of them sharing the bed on the roof) Asra feels the hot sting of tears in his eyes. But they are only tears of frustration, not grief; it is hard, today, not to feel overwhelmed.

Asra holds the tears back. He sniffs, pulls away, and smiles as convincingly as he can. “Thank you, Muriel,” he says, his hands rising to his neck so that Faust may coil around his arm. “Let’s meet back at the shop tonight, okay? Be careful. I’ll see you soon.”

Muriel gives him a wistful look, before pulling his hood over his head and turning away, loping back through the trees with Inana at his side. His steps are silent, indistinguishable from the other sounds that form the natural ambience of the forest. But before he is a few paces away, he tosses, ominously, over his shoulder:

“Guard yourself, Asra. I will see you in the evening, if we both make it out.”

 

* * *

 

In the early evening, for about the sixth time that day, Doctor No.069 begins to scream from his cell. Even though his voice is deadened by his cell door, Quaestor Valdemar can hear him shouting the minute they begin to descend the stairs to the dungeons.

Surely he had not been able to witness the abduction of his visitor, locked away as he was. But he must have overheard the commotion (the weighty, pleasing _thump_ of her body crumpling under Bludmila’s blow) because he has not stopped yelling about it since. ‘ _Where have you taken her_ ’ this, and ‘ _I’ll kill you if you harm her_ ’ that. All empty threats. Doctor No.069 is in no condition to enforce them, imprisoned as he is, and ( _finally!_ ) so weak in the throes of the plague.

Putting up quite a fuss, though, in spite of his weakness. Much more so than some of his colleagues had in their final days. Why, he shouts with more abandon even then some that had been strapped, still breathing, to the vivisection tables!

He has screamed himself hoarse, Valdemar observes. His voice is now so reedy and thin his words barely carry, the sound of his voice more raucous nonsense than language, shrill cries of despair, bird-sounds— _music._ How long the Quaestor has waited to hear him scream so! The boy has been nothing but a thorn in their side since the moment Count Lucio appointed him. So queasy, so weak, so _vapid,_ unwilling to make the sacrifices his chosen profession demanded of him. All in all, a _failure_ of a scientist.

And now, after all this time… Doctor No.069 has finally fallen ill.

The Quaestor smiles. What an unexpected blessing, that this dithering idiot has been removed from the table so close to the end, Lucio’s plan nearly brought to fruition. Now, this unremarkable ‘doctor’ will be unable to obstruct or interfere—Valdemar can turn their experiments to their true purpose without fearing that Doctor No.069 will discover (however intellectually stunted he may be) that the work they had been doing in the laboratory had absolutely _nothing_ to do with finding a cure.

If they were the superstitious type, Valdemar might take it as a sign that they were on a righteous path, ordained by some higher power, for their patience has been rewarded… as will be Lucio’s, and Volta’s, Vlastomil’s and Vulgora’s. _Soon_. And Quaestor Valdemar is patient—they can wait. 

They cannot, however, resist the opportunity to gloat.

Their footsteps are muted—nearly silent on the stairs—but the moment Valdemar pulls the sliding door of the peephole back from the cell door’s window, he can hear No.069 scurrying in the dark. Soon he is before the door, his eyes searching, desperate. The window only large enough to permit Valdemar to look into his eyes, but that is enough.

 _Carnal red, blood red, glorious scarlet red!_ How long has Valdemar waited to see this doctor’s sclera stained with sickness. It actually pulls a pleasured sigh from Valdemar’s lips. _At last, at last, at last!_

Perhaps Valdemar not be so hard on the doctor—he has, after all, gotten his jollies from this inconvenience Lucio had fostered upon him. There has been some pleasure in it, after all; Valdemar has had the satisfaction of watching Doctor No.069 _wither._ What a joy that has been! With each dissection, and then each vivisection, he watched the doctor’s will weaken… his shoulders sloping downwards, his posture more broken, the purple under his eyes from too many nights without sleep. It is fortune, that this meddlesome boy has been removed now to a place where he can do no harm, but the Quaestor cannot help but be a little bitter: he had been close— _so close!_ —to making the him break.

Though he is certainly broken now. His red-stained eyes are wide with panic, fury, _despair_ ; from this tiny glimpse of him Valdemar has at the door, he even looks to be trembling, quivering like a rabbit caught in a trap. _Beautiful._ Valdemar thinks: _if I broke down the door, sliced down his abdomen, peeled back the flesh and muscle from his chest, how fast would his heart be beating in his chest? Allegro? Prestissimo?_

But then Doctor No.069 opens his mouth and speaks, and the hoarseness of his voice, so saturated with desperation, is enough to make Valdemar quiver a little bit, too—a shudder of arousal runs down their spine when the captive doctor hisses, “ _Where is she_?”

“Whom?” Valdemar replies, their tone more indifferent than innocent.

“Aredhel!” No.069 practically shouts, but his voice is uneven from too much use and it cracks upon her name. “The magician! The one they took last night— _what have you done with her?!_ ”

Valdemar brings their gloved fingers to their breast, fingertips perched in a five-pointed star over their heart in a gesture of offense. “ _I_ have done nothing, Doctor 069,” they tell him, truthfully. “Though I cannot say for certain what the Count may have done. It was he, not I, who was interested in the witch.”

There’s a slamming on the other side of the door—the doctor’s fist, Valdemar hypothesizes, meeting the wood. 069’s face withdraws from the window, bowing towards his chest in a gesture of defeat. In the echoing silence of the dungeon, there is no concealing the sound he makes—a pitched sob, a moan of fright.

 _Music, music, music._ If only Valdemar had a way of preserving it, of playing it back over and over—memory will have to serve. 

When his eyes reappear at the window, they are squinted with hate. “What are you doing here, then? Come to taunt me, have you?”

“Yes, something like that,” Valdemar replies, nodding encouragingly. “Or—perhaps to cheer you on? To express my enthusiasm? You are _very_ sick. Soon, I think, you will perish—and honestly, Doctor No.069, I can hardly contain my excitement. I am positively _effervescent_ with it.”

A feral sound—a sort of growl—comes through the door. Though Valdemar cannot see No.069’s face, he can tell by the look in his eye that his mouth is twisted in his signature sneer, a look of defiance. “I will _not_ die,” he declares, an absurd statement if there ever was one. Even an imbecile, untrained in the medical sciences, could tell from one glance at him that he was not long for this world. But then again, _reason_ and _logic_ had never been among 069’s scant strengths. “And I won’t be locked down here for long. Lucio will release me, once I find the cure.”

Valdemar cannot help it—they laugh.

It is a shrill and tittering sound, and it carries through the empty halls of the dungeon like the chattering of bats. “ _You?_ Find a cure?” _For MY disease? Impossible._ “We both know you lack the ingenuity, the knowledge, the medical brilliance. And I’m quite sure those were the conditions: you are to be locked here until you find a cure, or until you perish,” Valdemar says, baring their teeth in a pointed grin. “We both know, I think, which will come first.”

Doctor No. 069’s gaze is still defiant as it glares back at them through the peephole, but its strength wanes; a trill of delight flashes in Valdemar’s chest as they see self-doubt creep into his expression. “You’re wrong,” the doctor says, but does not sound terribly convinced.

“Am I?” Valdemar grins. Then, practically swooning, they add, “Oh, how I look forward to taking you apart! I am so _indescribably_ eager to see what aberrations beneath that thick skull of yours are responsible for your personal failings. You are lucky Lucio has locked you up here, instead if in your cell in the laboratory—otherwise, your colleagues might be poking around your insides this very instant.”

And— _yes!_ —in Doctor No. 069’s eyes—between the rage, and the doubt—a flash of fear. To Valdemar, it may as well be an aphrodisiac. 

“It is no matter,” Valdemar continues, their gaze softening. They give Doctor No.069 a look that (under different circumstances) might be described as longing. “Some pleasures are worth waiting for. And consider this: in death, you will serve a greater use to your colleagues than any contribution you made in life.”

“That—that isn’t true,” Doctor No.069’s replies, but his voice lacks the confidence and swagger he often armors himself in. “I’m going to do it—prove all of you wrong. Find the cure, find out what the _hell_ you’ve done with Aredhel, and then—”

“And then what?” Valdemar asks, practically giddy. “You’ll cure the whole city? Such a lovely fantasy you’ve imagined for yourself, Doctor No.069, but it is no more than that. You will never be more than a mediocre physician… and not even that, for much longer.”

Valdemar is too cool, collected, _wise_ to show their hand. The truth of the matter is by the end of the Masquerade, all of the pieces of their plan will have fallen into place. The plague has only been the beginning. Soon, Vesuvia—and the world beyond—will have far greater problems to worry about than mere sickness. And Valdemar sees the sickness in Doctor No.069’s eyes; in his medical opinion, they doubt very much that the doctor will live out the night. And even the most _brilliant, celebrated, academic_ of medical professionals could not synthesize a cure overnight. 

But, ahh, if Doctor No.069 wishes to spend his last hours attempting the impossible, who is the Quaestor to stop him? They have never known this particular doctor to be reasonable; there is no evidence to suggest he will be reasonable now, at the end.

“I do not know what has happened to your friend,” Valdemar says, leaning close to the window, “but you may console yourself with this thought: I promise you that after tonight, whether or not you have found a cure, it won’t matter much, either way. For you or for her.”

_For you will perish—all of you—just the same._

 

* * *

 

It is the deep heat of summer, and the days in Vesuvia are long; all the same, the sun is slung low in the sky by the time Asra finally reaches the palace gates. He has cleaned himself best as he could from his trip into the woods, and dressed himself in finery gifted to him by the Countess.

And when he enters the doors of the palace and is ushered by the chamberlain into the banquet hall, it is the Countess who is first to greet him.

“Asra, my dear friend,” Nadia exclaims, her tone warm and gentle. “How wonderful to see you at last!”

In an uncharacteristic gesture of familiarity, the Countess takes his hands in hers and leans down over him, pressing a kiss of welcome to his cheek. Her lips linger near his skin and she whispers, urgently, close to his ear, “Look pleasant. We are being watched.”

When she pulls away she is still smiling—Nadia, his dear friend, an expert in courtly intrigue—but Asra cannot help his eyes from roaming the room, taking in the other guests. “By whom?” he asks, though his expression remains pleasant.

“The other courtiers, of course,” Nadia tells him, keeping her voice low through her welcoming smile. “It would seem that my dear husband has planned a surprise or two for us tonight.”

Asra’s mood darkens, though it does not reflect on his face. His own, similar suspicions have tormented him all afternoon, though his are based more on instinct than evidence. If Nadia’s insinuating something strange is afoot, she’s probably going on more than just her gut. “How do you figure that?”

Nadia tilts her chin, gracefully, to the end of the banquet hall, where sheer curtains frame a doorway leading out onto a veranda. 

“Walk with me.”

In a swirl of expensive and elegantly tailored silks Nadia turns, and leads him further into the banquet hall. She nods politely to each of the courtiers she passes, waves in greeting at several from across the room, before she leads Asra to a veranda on the far side. It looks out onto the garden. Here, they are not completely safe from being overheard, but they are afforded slightly more privacy than in the banquet hall.

“May I offer you something?” she asks Asra, gesturing to a beverage cart, well-stocked, not far from the doorway. “An aperitif, perhaps?”

Just like Nadia, to hold to the customs of hospitality even when there was danger at hand. But Asra only shakes his head. He’s too tense, too coiled to be drinking, now. “No, thank you.” 

“Then you will forgive me, I hope, if I drink myself. If only to settle my nerves.”

She pours herself a glass of a sparkling, golden liquer, then carries her glass to the marble banister that rings the edge of the veranda. Once settled, Nadia grimaces, bringing her fingertips to her temples and rubbing. 

“Another headache?” Asra asks, sympathetically. 

Nadia only frowns. “I am not sure. I think it is simply the stress of things. You have not visited us at the palace in quite some time, but Lucio has been… more unbearable than usual, if you can imagine it.” She grimaces, her red eyes flashing a pointed look at him. “In one moment he is eerily nonchalant about his illness; in the next, he is positively _infuriated_ by it. And he is trying to hide something from me, but you know as well as I from our games with the Arcana that he is terrible at bluffing. I know he is up to something, but I cannot say what.”

Nadia sighs, gazing out at the gardens below. Ordinarily, Nadia is self-possessed, graceful, assured. While Asra would not quite dare to call her ‘rattled’ in her present state, she is definitely less composed than usual. “I believe the courtiers know that I suspect something. They have been very terse with me. It is why I wished to have your help earlier… did you not receive the messages I sent with Chandra?”

Asra’s stomach twists with guilt. In truth, he’d received _all_ of Nadia’s letters. Chandra would come by the shop, but every time he’d sent the owl away without answer; he hadn’t even broken the seal on her missives. In retrospect, he recognizes his own folly… but at the time, Aredhel had been sick. Dying, he’d thought. And then there’d been the mess with the palace guards, and the Lazaret, and Ilya….

“Sorry, Nadia,” Asra says, and he cannot keep the exhaustion from his voice. He leans over the marble bannister, his shoulders sloped, his head hanging low. “It’s been kind of a tough week.”

Nadia’ eyes flash with alarm: this is not the Asra she knows, so easily defeated. Where is his sunny disposition, his smile, his laughter? “Asra, whatever is the matter?”

Asra flashes her a smile meant to reassure, but it is a shadow of its true self. Still, he tells her, “Don’t worry about it,” and before Nadia can press him, he changes the subject. There are more urgent matters at hand than the heartbreak he has suffered. “Tell me why you think Lucio is up to something?”

Nadia gaze lingers on him, concerned. But then she turns, propping her elbows on the bannister and leaning back upon it, peering back into the banquet hall. “The evidence is plain even tonight,” she says, with a barely perceptible nod back towards the courtiers. “Volta is so excited she has only managed to put away two plates of food—ordinarily, she’d have devoured five before the meal officially commenced. Vulgora has been suspiciously well behaved—I don’t think they’ve threatened anyone yet. Valdemar has been… difficult to observe,” she says, turning her gaze back towards Asra and favoring him with a sympathetic look. “They have been gloating a bit too much to read past their pleasure, since Doctor Devorak was found to have fallen ill with the plague.”

Asra can feel Nadia’s eyes upon him. He knows her concern is well intentioned, the kind that comes from their friendship, tried and true. But he does _not_ want to engage in a discussion about Ilya right now, especially not about his illness—nor does he want Nadia’s sympathy, if she thinks Ilya’s illness is the reason he’s upset.

Nadia—perceptive as always—must read in his expression that he does not wish to discuss it, because she tactfully steers the conversation away.

“But, ahh, I think Lucio may be playing our dear courtiers against each other,” she continues. “There are two games afoot tonight. For Consul Valerius has been remarkably conservative with his wine consumption, and he is dancing around both myself and the other courtiers alike. Out of all of them, _he_ has behaved most peculiar towards me. I believe Lucio is telling him a different story than the one he wants the others to believe, which is unsurprising, given their _particular_ closeness. However, I cannot gauge whether Lucio is playing his advisors, or his lover. He has never held his personal relationships in particularly high regard. For all I know he may be lying to Valerius, simply to lessen his suspicion.”

Nadia sighs. “Or _my_ suspicion has simply gotten the better of _me_ , and all of this is the buildup to a frivolous—though no doubt extravagant—party trick.” She raises her glass to her face to take another sip, eyes closing as the sweetness of the liqueur meets her tongue.

But Asra—Asra does not think it is simply a party trick. It would be too convenient. And Aredhel is still missing—there had been no sign she’d stopped by when he went back to the shop to change—and the lengthier her absence grows, the more Asra worries that she really has gotten herself into some trouble.

Nadia sets her glass on the bannister and turns towards him, her head tilted curiously to the side. “May I ask—if it has been such a difficult week, why have you returned to the palace now? Surely it is not pleasure of the company of our beloved Count.”

It most certainly is not. Asra has come here to settle suspicions of his own, but now that he has arrived, he almost wishes he hadn’t. He is glad, of course, to be here for Nadia; she surrounded by enemies with naught but the other courtiers and Lucio for company, and she is dear to him, and if something is going to happen at dinner, Asra wants to be at her side, to protect her, if he can. But Nadia is not the only one he cares for. If Aredhel has been caught, there is no telling what surreptitious, extrajudicial punishment Lucio may have condemned her to endure. She may yet be in the palace. And if something is going to happen….

…and then, there’s Ilya. Locked away beneath their feet, under several stories of wood and stone. And no matter how bitter Asra may be, or how wistful he feels that both Aredhel and Ilya have decided to shut him out, he does not blame either of them. For the first time, he realizes the truth of the matter: he does not want any ill fate to befall Ilya, either.

Nadia moves closer and covers one of his hands with her own. “Asra, I should hope by now, after all the hours we have spent with one another, you know that you can tell me anything. But in case you have not learned, I promise you: I will be discrete. You have my confidence.”

She is so close, and looking at him so tenderly, her eyes full of love and concern, and he cannot, _cannot_ keep this secret from her any longer. It has hung above his head like a downturned sword suspended by the thinnest of threads, and after the week he has had, and the test he had faced in the shop (he is beginning to regret, even now, refusing that damned necklace, though he still believes he has made the right choice) and Muriel’s parting words to him, he no longer has the energy to maintain the deception.

“I have been lying to you,” Asra admits, quietly. “From the very beginning I’ve been lying.”

Nadia’s expression does not falter: she remains concerned, open, patient. If his admission of deception has alarmed or offended her, it does not show in the least, and when she prods him for further information, her voice is kind. “About?”

That one word— _about?_ said with such compassion—utterly unspools Asra, and before he can stop himself the whole story is spilling out of him. 

“I don’t own the apothecary,” he confesses, unable to look at her, his eyes fixed on the trunk of the willow tree in the garden below. “I’m not a magical prodigy. I’m not even a full fledged magician—technically, I’m still an apprentice.” He hardly dares to look at Nadia—only flashes her the occasional glance out of the corner of his eye—but what little he sees of her expression is unreadable. “My master, she—my teacher. She got sick. She’s been sick for a really long time, longer than Lucio… I’ve been keeping her hidden in the shop. That’s what… that’s why I haven’t been around, Nadia, and I’m so sorry about that, but this week, we thought she was going to pass.”

Nadia’s eyebrows knit; she gives Asra’s hand a firm squeeze. “Oh, Asra.” 

“She didn’t, though,” Asra is quick to add. “I… I figured out a way, to save her, with magic. And I can’t explain it all now, but that’s how Ilya got sick. And I’m afraid she came after him—to the palace. I haven’t seen her in more than a day.”

“So you are here to question the Doctor?” Nadia asks, tilting her head to the side. “And you are using the meal as pretext to gain access to him, to see if he has heard from your teacher?”

“No, not quite,” Asra says, “I have my suspicions about Lucio, too. So I want to be here, with you, in case he tries anything. But I have a friend… I sent him to the dungeons. He has a kind of magic, too. I don’t think the guards will even notice him.”

At that, Nadia can’t help but grin, a little. “So to be clear, Asra: you are telling me that not one but likely _two_ of your friends—who I have heard nothing about until this point in time—have penetrated the security of my home and are now likely wandering about its corridors, unbeknownst to the Palace Guard, and while Lucio is potentially in the midst of some grand and dastardly scheme?”

To that, Asra can only reply with a sheepish grin.

Nadia actually laughs, a light and musical sound. “Wonderful,” she replies, sarcastically, raising her glass to her lips and draining it. She has barely set the empty glass down upon the bannister when Lucio’s voice slices through the din of the banquet hall like an out-of-tune oboe in a symphony.

“Noddy!” he cries, his voice pitched in a whine. “We’re getting started!”

Nadia’s hands clench into fists, but she closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and releases the tension in her hands a moment later. She shares a conspiratorial grin with Asra, then rolls her eyes.

“Come,” she tells him, taking his hand in hers once more. “We cannot keep the birthday boy waiting.”

 

* * *

 

“Help! Please, someone— _anyone_ —listen to me! I’ve done it!”

But the dungeons are quiet. There is no patter of feet upon the stairs, no distant creak of the door to the dungeon opening. Ilya beats his fist against the door in vain, more out of frustration than any hope that the sound will attract attention. His hands are red from his effort, riddled with splinters. 

Time is slippery, down here, in a darkness the sun does not reach… but he feels as though he has been shouting for _hours._

And his voice—already hoarse from screaming after Aredhel—is probably too weak to carry much farther than the corridor beyond his own cell.

All the same, he keeps trying—it is all he can do. 

“Please! Someone, you have to come quickly, I’ve done it—I’ve got the cure!”

Something about the way Valdemar had taunted him… it had awakened something in him. A determination, a ferocity. Though the plague still caused him aches and pains, its fever burning through him, he’d been able to put those sensations aside and focus on the work before him. And the thought of Aredhel in Lucio’s clutches had provided just the motivation he needed: if ever there was a time for haste, an answered prayer, a _eureka,_ the moment was now.

…when he’d seen it, though, he’d been at first too stunned to say anything. The answer seemed too simple. He’d leapt to his feet, hands trembling as he reviewed the formulas on his parchment, double, then triple-checking his work.

But the work was good, sound, solid. In his hands, on the parchment… a cure.

But oh, cruel fate! It hardly seemed to matter, now. One would have thought that Lucio was so desperate for his cure, he would have one of his guards stationed nearby to alert him if Ilya actually found one. Perhaps Ilya should find that suspicious, but Ilya does not spare a thought for Lucio’s motivations, why or why not no one has come to collect him. His despair is so total it swallows him—it permits no space for anything else.

The darkness torments him. The candle on his desk flickers, its wick nearly exhausted, casting shadows, phantasms on the wall: he remembers the old days, when he was younger—more foolish, though that’s hard to believe—and he had met Lucio as a field surgeon during the war.

(He remembers with perfect clarity the reputation Lucio had in those days. How he liked to toy with his enemies. His propensity for sadism.)

Panic colors anguish; he’s shouted so long he can hardly catch his breath. His breathing is labored… standing has become… difficult, he feels weak, faint-headed. He sinks to his knees, then fully to the floor, both in defeat and in exhaustion. One hand comes to cover his mouth; the other arm wraps tightly around his abdomen, holding himself, trying to console himself.

“ _Aredhel…_ ”

Tears sting his eyes, and he feels a sobbing beginning to build deep in his chest. _This is all my fault._ He had told her, he had warned her—how many times?—not to stay here, to leave the dungeon, to _get out._ Against his better judgement, he had allowed her to stay. He had wanted her too much. And now, they are both paying the price for Ilya’s lust. 

He should have told her the truth. He should have told her everything, the minute she’d stepped through the door. The dissections, the vivisections, bodies carelessly tossed into pits to be disposed of, devoured by vermin, the smells, the _injustices_ —but he had been too weak, too selfish to relinquish her love, a love he did not deserve. And now, she is in danger— _again, again, my fault_ —and this time, he is locked away, and he cannot help her. This time, he cannot rescue her. 

This time, there is no way to fix his mistakes.

A lament begins, low in his chest, then climbs until it reverberates against the walls of his cell, filling it, a wail—

Iron scratching iron, the sliding door of the peephole being pulled back.

Ilya gasps so violently he nearly chokes on his own sob, scrambling to his feet, clawing at the door and peering out into the corridor. An unfamiliar face greets him. He can make out little more than the stranger’s green eyes, but from what he can see, he does not look to be one of the palace guard.

“Please,” he implores, his hand pressing through the bars of the peephole, fingers reaching desperately for the stranger. “ _Please,_ you have to help me—I’ve got the cure, I shouldn’t _be here_ , please, you have to—can you take me to the Countess?”

The stranger’s eyes shift to the side, away from him. “I don’t know where she is.”

It’s such a direct and unexpected statement that Ilya actually blinks in surprise, and pulls a fraction of an inch away from the peephole. “But how can you—shouldn’t you? Know where she is?” he suggests, meekly. “I mean, you must work for the palace, don’t you?”

Green eyes flash back to him, simmering with hatred, though Ilya doesn’t think it’s directed necessarily at him. “No. I don’t.”

“Then how… how did you—what are you doing here?”

It is hard to tell, in the dim light of the dungeons, but Ilya swears the stranger’s cheeks color.

“Asra sent me.”

“ _Asra?!_ ” Ilya exclaims. His head jerks towards the door, straining for a better look at the stranger—instead of getting one, he only knocks his forehead soundly against the iron that frames the peephole. Hissing a curse under his breath, he pulls away, rubbing his brow. “He sent you? But wait… why would he—uhh, isn’t he, shouldn’t he be furious with me?”

“I don’t know.” Again, the stranger’s eyes move to the side, avoiding his. “He sent me to look for Aredhel. he thought she might have come here.”

Ilya’s knees nearly give out underneath him.

Bless Asra, bless his patience, bless the boundless capacity of his heart that drives him (somehow, inexplicably) to care enough about Ilya and Aredhel, still, in spite of all they have done. All they have put him through. Ilya’s not necessarily the religious type, but if they make it out of this unscathed, he’s going to write letters; he’s going to propose Asra be canonized.

“Oh, god, oh gods, yes, she did, she did!” Ilya says, his fingers clawing at the peephole. “But they, they caught her—the guards, I think—and I don’t know what they’ve done with her. Please, _please,_ you have to help, you have to look for her!”

The stranger looks deeply uncomfortable. “I don’t…” he begins, then sighs, closing his eyes. When his gaze meets Ilya’s again, it is apologetic. “I don’t know my way around. I wouldn’t know where to look.”

“Please,” Ilya begs again, his voice pitching towards desperation. “I beg of you, please—I’d look for her myself if I could, but I can’t get out—unless you have a key?”

“A key?” the stranger repeats, blinking. “Oh, for the door?”

Ilya knows what he looks like, what he sounds like—crazed, mad, _desperate_ , probably more than a little incoherent—but that point, he thinks, should not need clarification. He’s about to say as much, but before he can get the words out there’s a screeching, the protest of metal, the splintering of wood—

The door is wrenched off his hinges in a single, dramatic gesture, and tossed aside in the hallway as though it were no more than a sack of potatoes. In the doorway stands… the _biggest_ man Ilya has ever seen, and that’s saying something, given some of the sailors and warriors he’s met in his time. He probably isn’t much taller than Ilya himself, but he’s broad, all thick muscle and sinew. The shadow he casts eclipses Ilya’s frame entirely.

And Ilya… Ilya is so stunned, flabbergasted, eyes wide, mouth opened like a fish, that it takes a moment for his relief to hit him. 

“Uhh. Wow, Asra’s friend. You’re, uhh… you’re pretty big.”

But then Ilya shakes his head—shakes the sense back into himself—and reaches out, grabbing the stranger’s massive hand in his and tugging him down the hall. (He can barely get his own hand around three of the other man’s fingers.)

“Come on, we have to find her—we may not have much time—”

Violently, Asra’s friend wrenches his hand away, glowering at Ilya. That’s fine—it bounces right off him. It also frees Ilya to cup both hands around his mouth and holler as loud as he can.

“Aredhel! _Aredhel!_ ”

By now his throat feels like it is on fire, swollen from use, his voice a ghost of itself. But there no shout is returned through the depths of the dungeon… and from the way Ilya can hear his own voice echo back at him, he thinks that, if she were down there, she would hear him.

Then he remembers Quaestor Valdemar’s words: _I cannot say for certain what the Count may have done. It was he, not I, who was interested in the witch._

“Lucio’s wing.” The words are hardly more than a whisper, a gasp wrest from his lungs. 

“Come on,” he says, passing a glance over his shoulder at Asra’s friend, already speeding towards the dungeon exit. “I think I know where she is, but we have to hurry.”

_If he has harmed a hair on her head…._

Ilya takes the stairs three at a time, tears through the halls of the palace at a sprint. Occasionally, he can hear the distant sounds of the Masquerade, music and cheers. Maybe that explains why the palace seems so empty. They only encounter one guard on their way towards the Count’s wing, but he poses no threat: Asra’s friend places one massive hand on his forehead, and tosses him against the wall with minimal effort. When the guard’s head meets the wall, he crumples.

The sounds of the party seem to grow louder the closer they grow to their destination. There’s definitely cheering— _or shouting? What kind of spectacle has Lucio set up this time?_ —and, faintly, in the halls, Ilya can smell smoke. The scent grows stronger as Ilya sprints up the spiral staircase that leads to the Count’s wing. _Fireworks, maybe,_ Ilya thinks. _Lucio always had a penchant for_ —

But Ilya’s interior monologue is silenced when he rounds the corner, and finds Lucio’s bedroom up in flames.

A weak moan is torn from his lips. A crowd has gathered outside the Count’s bedroom. They are shouting, imploring, but Ilya—mind blank with fear—does not hear a word they are saying. He knows, _he knows_ , with an intuition he cannot name, that Aredhel is in that room.

_Hold on, love, I am coming._

His legs are shaking—from exhaustion, or fear, or both—but he plants one foot in front of the other, gets a running start before he leaps through the opened door, over the flames that lick the threshold and straight into the inferno awaiting within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:  
> This update took a little longer than I’d hoped as I got a bit bogged down with work and also spent some time traveling. But a note, for those of you who are reading as this updates, I do hope to have the entire piece finished by early/mid August. This may change, but it seems realistic at the moment. After this update there should only be 2-3 more chapters, with possibly an epilogue, and then we’ll be done. :) 
> 
> Fear not though, I’m already dreaming up an even crazier AU to take on once I’m done with this one—I can’t wait to share it.
> 
> Many thanks to all of you who are still enjoying, commenting upon, and sharing this work! It’s been a wild ride and its such a pleasure to share it all with you.


	11. Gate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every instinct in Aredhel’s body had screamed: fight. It is an old impulse, one that has moved her since childhood, as irrevocable as though it were carved in stone; at Lucio’s words, already her muscles tauten, collecting momentum. It is as it was on the roof, where the guards had found her, wrapped in Asra’s arms beneath the old hawthorn tree. So here, too, in Lucio’s bedroom, her arms had coiled to claw, legs tightened to scramble, to kick; to lash out in front of her and strike the palace guard—Ludo, is he called?—straight in the shins, hard enough to buckle him. 
> 
> It is an old impulse, as irrevocable as though it were carved in stone; but this time, (for Ilya, this restraint is only for him) she did not give into it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: memories of past verbal abuse, trauma, self-hatred, grief, suicidal thoughts (a very brief mention), blood, physical assault, repression

_“Give her just enough of the sedative to make her stupid, and to keep her magic beyond her grasp, but keep her awake. Conscious enough to understand the danger she has landed herself in, but too witless to do anything about it.”_

Every instinct in Aredhel’s body had screamed: _fight_. It is an old impulse, one that has moved her since childhood, as irrevocable as though it were carved in stone; at Lucio’s words, already her muscles tauten, collecting momentum. It is as it was on the roof, where the guards had found her, wrapped in Asra’s arms beneath the old hawthorn tree. So here, too, in Lucio’s bedroom, her arms had coiled to claw, legs tightened to scramble, to kick; to lash out in front of her and strike the palace guard— _Ludo, is he called?_ —straight in the shins, hard enough to buckle him. 

It is an old impulse, as irrevocable as though it were carved in stone; but this time, ( _for Ilya, this restraint is only for him_ ) she did not give into it.

Instead, she had bowed her head to the ground. As the palace guard approached she had tried her best to look demure; she had averted her gaze. ‘ _It is not cowardly_ ,’ she reassures herself, ‘ _because it is part of a plan, the future rebellion imagined._ ’ She had arranged her limbs into an expression of defeat—slumped, loose—and sat as quiet and still as she could. 

Still, it is… an exquisite torture, to feign submission. But when the guard had reached her, spoon in hand, he found her pliant; she allowed him to tilt back her head (with surprising gentleness) and spoon the sedative onto her tongue. 

The foul cordial slides down her throat; she shudders at the taste of it, the way it leaves her throat tingling.

But Aredhel reasons it this way ( _future rebellion, imagined_ ): this is the greatest danger she has ever found herself in. She is certainly _‘conscious enough_ ’ to understand that much, though she is far from witless. If she fights now, sedated as she is, it is a fight she will not win. If she fights now—if the guard feels he must restrain her—he may give her a higher dosage, make her _stupider_. It is a risk she cannot afford to take, not with Ilya’s safety—and Asra’s—hanging in the balance.

Better, then, to save her strength for when Lucio returns for her—for he is surely going to return, sooner or later. And when he does, she will need every bit of power her body can muster.

Lucio wanted her right on the edge between witless and unconscious, a delicate tightrope to walk; a stupid, foolish request. 

It would have been far safer for him to let unconsciousness take her.  

The bitter taste of the sedative still lingers on her tongue; it will be many hours, yet, before it works its way out of her system. Until then, she will not be able to reach for the source of her magic; ordinary means of spell casting will be unavailable to her.

But Albert Mooney—both by instruction and unwitting example—had taught Aredhel to be anything but ordinary.

Albert’s old grimoire still lurks beneath the floorboards of Aredhel’s bed—just yesterday she had knelt beside the bed frame and run her fingers over its crimson cover, leaving streaks on the leather where she’d wiped free years of dust. The book is full of bargains and terrible costs exacted by them. Its pages are stained with knowledge both dark and terrible. Aredhel has traced her fingers over the inked vellum pages more often than she would like to admit, flirting with the forbidden. 

She cannot reach for the source of her magic, but Albert’s book had taught her of other sources of power she might yet grasp.

The power of blood, for instance.

Aredhel has never dared use such magicks, though in the wake of Albert’s death, she had studied the theory of it extensively motivated perhaps more by spite than curiosity. (Even as he had withered, even as exhausting and despair had claimed him, he had always tried to keep these things—his aims, his obsessions—away from her, worlds he had closed off to her, a widening chasm between them.) There were, of course, many uses for blood in the casting of magic, and many of them are not nearly as forbidden as the kind Aredhel thinks of now: she imagines rent flesh, spilt blood, and the spinning of such frothing, gushing, _furious_ force of life into something sharp, and violent….

' _It will leave an eternal incision upon your soul,_ ' she had cautioned Asra, a warning fallen on deaf ears. Not two days ago, defending himself, Asra had asked her in return, ‘ _Would you have let go of me so easily?_ ’

Aredhel does not know the answer to that particular question; it is a test she hopes never to face. What she does know is that Lucio has threatened Asra, threatened Ilya; these things distress her worse than any threat he has made to her own safety. Now she finds herself contemplating the same dark and ancient magicks she had sworn long ago never to invoke, after seeing how fiercely they had twisted her uncle, turning him into a wraith of his former self. But these circumstances seem uniquely dire. 

‘ _It will be nothing but adventures,_ ’ Ilya had told her, holding her close, ‘ _Helping people when we can. Seeing—everything. A little bit dangerous, too, but I will protect you. Always._ ’

But first, Aredhel must protect him, and the dream they had hatched only yesterday in the dungeons, yet newborn and fragile.

It is a dream she does not deserve, the future Ilya has promised her. But it is warm and drenched in sunlight, so bright and dazzling with color she can hardly think on it for long without grinning, and she will not let go of it. 

(If she does this thing she is contemplating—reaches for magic she has so long refused on principle—will she prove herself undeserving of such pure, boundless happiness?)

A temptation is creeping into the back of her mind: to do bad things, to be not only violent, but vengeful. To make Lucio pay for the audacity he has demonstrated, imprisoning her without cause, threatening those she loves. For the abuse he has heaped on Asra and Ilya both as they worked under his watch in the palace these last few months. For allowing this city—this brilliant, terrible city that Aredhel loves and loathes in equal measure, the home of so many of her beginnings and endings, the place of her blossoming, becoming (the memories that criss-cross the city like a lattice and turn it into a cage)—to fall to ruin, failing utterly the citizens in his care, indifferent to their suffering.

Her hate for Lucio presses close upon her, like the shadows of his bedroom.

The thought of making him suffer—making him pay—is so dangerous. So seductive.

_But Ilya, gentle Ilya—will I be worthy of you still, if I do this dark thing?_

Again, she thinks of Albert… and whether or not, in the end, Brona would have forgiven him, both for his absence and the life he squandered after her passing. 

Then, for the first time in a long time—years maybe; certainly months—she thinks of her mother. Aredhel’s memory of her is hardly more than an abstract smear of color, a feeling. So committed was she to chasing seductive magics and forbidden arts that she had abandoned her child, unwilling to be tethered by motherhood—or so Aredhel’s father had told her. ‘ _Magic is why Nemain left you, why she did not love you enough to stay,_ ’ he had told her repeatedly. ‘ _You will not work your little tricks while you are sheltered under my roof!_ ’

(He always referred to her as such—‘ _Nemain,_ ’ ‘ _that witch,_ ’ ‘ _that harpy_ ’—never, ever, ‘ _your mother._ ’)

Nemain, Albert, the whole Mooney Clan—is evil, then, in her very blood? Is she fated to be called to carry out its work whether or not she resists the urge to turn her power on Lucio now? 

Gods help her; if she resists, will she only—inevitably, eventually—turn it upon Ilya?

For so long Aredhel has resolved not to follow them—her mother, her uncle—to chart her own path, to become her own. It is part of why she had so loved Asra: she saw in him the chance to do something _good_. She would break the cycle; she would redeem her family’s honor. In Asra, she would raise a magician who would not be so easily seduced by darkness, who would use his gifts for good alone… and she has failed in that, too, in the end. 

(Though now, she can admit: it was never really fair of her to make Asra into a repository for all her hopes and dreams of redemption, of becoming, of a future in which she could be something bright and untarnished and utterly unlike her mother and uncle before her.)

Now, it all seems so foolish. There was no better path she could have taken. There was, in the end, no way to avoid arriving at this point—this crossroads—forced into a corner where she can no longer deny the darkness that has grown inside of her since the moment her magic manifested.

Inevitable.

(The pleasure she had taken in her power not a few hours ago, hunting down the palace guard, preparing to take his memories from him... her hunger had been awake even then.)

‘ _It will only be once_ ,’ Aredhel thinks, trying to rationalize, to negotiate her way out of this fall. ‘ _I will use this magic once and never again, and if it stains my hands, so be it._ ’

Because there is one truth she still holds more inevitable, irrefutable and solid than even her fighting instinct, or this destiny of darkness: if she is forced to choose between keeping Asra and Ilya safe and clinging to a purity she was only fated to lose from the beginning, she will choose the both of them, again, and again, and _again._

 

 

 

There is no telling how much time passes, how long Aredhel is left to sit in the darkness with ghosts chasing one another around her thoughts. But there is no mistaking when Lucio returns for her; she can hear his gleeful voice echoing down the hallway of his wing, even from the other side of the bedroom door.

“Oh, Miss Mooney! Have you missed me?”

Her eyes dart to the slender sliver of light that leaks in from beneath the bedroom door. As soon as the feeling had started to return to her fingers, she had begun run her bound hands along her legs, trying to rub enough feeling into them for at least one forceful blow. As the pace of Lucio’s footsteps quicken—as his shadow slices through the light leaking through the threshold—she is not entirely sure she has succeeded.

“Because—and don’t let this go to your head, now—I missed _you_.”

The door opens. Lucio is hardly more than a silhouette—deep red cloak, trimmed with fur; golden adornments flashing; gleaming claw—a garish impression against the bright light that spills in from the hallway. It is so bright, after such a stretch of darkness; Aredhel flinches from it, and squeezes her stinging eyes closed, willing them to adjust.

The afterimage of Lucio—posturing like a predator—burns the back of her eyelids.

“Ahh, here she is, in the flesh,” Lucio purrs. There is a click of the door closing behind him—the dull _thunk_ of a deadbolt lock sliding into place. The carpet deadens the sound of his boots, but she can hear Lucio approaching her in the sound and shape of his voice. “The miraculous Miss Mooney.”

Her breath hitches at the touch of chilled metal against her chin, a pinch of golden forefinger and thumb— _how can it be so cold?_ —coming to draw her head upwards, so that he can look in her face. Swallowing, Aredhel blinks—

He is close. So intimately, menacingly close. 

It catches her by surprise, and even sedated, she can’t help but flinch away from him a second time; Lucio’s fingers hold her jaw tighter, preventing her retreat, and his thin lips stretch into a leer.

“No one has every survived my plague,” he whispers, his thumb stroking over the cleft of Aredhel’s chin. “No one has ever been able to survive _me_. It should have been impossible. I cannot tell you how _vexing_ —”

But then he turns, closes his eyes and grits his teeth. He shakes his head, before his eyes slowly return to meet Aredhel’s.

“It is no matter,” he tells her, quietly. “Tonight, I will remedy that.” 

Lucio sighs, and his hand guides her head this way and that. He inspects her with detached interest. “I was going to make you tell me how you did it. I would have very much enjoyed that… but I’ve thought of a better use for you.”

“If you think I will allow myself to be used as leverage against my friends,” Aredhel tells him, thinking ( _again, only_ ) of Ilya and Asra, “then you are mistaken.”

Lucio laughs, releasing Aredhel’s chin. His whole body shakes with his laughter. “Leverage?” he grins. “What could I possibly want from them that I cannot take from you?”

This is the first allusion he has made to the fact that he intends to _take._  

What he wishes to claim, Aredhel cannot say, but it still has her muscles—those that are not yet to sluggish to obey her—tighten with fear. And what is this he is saying— _my_ plague, survive _me_ —what is he confessing? Is the plague some design of his own? Has he brought it here on purpose? The only reason it does not seem _impossible_ is because of all the tyrants she has ever known of, Lucio seems just the kind to decimate his populace with a blight none can fight. 

If it is true, though—if it really is some weapon of Lucio’s making—she doubts he’s going to let her live long enough to tell anyone else.

“And honestly, shame on me for not seeing it sooner. Look at you!” Lucio says, rising to his feet and gesturing up and down her body. “ _Look at you._ You’re stronger than Asra—the real deal. I can practically smell the power bleeding out of you aura. And—admit it—you are the personification, the _absolute embodiment_ of a crossroads,” Lucio says, with a laugh. With a smirk, he backs away from her, making his way towards a dresser on the far side of the room. He unbuckles his cloak from his shoulders and tosses it carelessly over the back of a chair, before rifling through the dresser drawers.

He does not, Aredhel notes, stop talking; he does so love to hear himself talk.

“You are stuck between worlds, aren’t you? Suspended.” She can’t make out what he’s pulling out of the drawers—his body blocks her view—but she hears the clack of items being set down on the dresser’s red-lacquered surface. “Two paths. You’ve spent so long on the knife’s edge between life and death… you’ll be a perfect conduit to bear me through.”

Over the clatter of objects she hears a _tick-ticking_ —the strike of iron against flint, the breath of flame. Lucio’s breath, a moment later, extinguishing that same fire to smolder. 

Faintly though she smells it, the scent of the incense makes her dizzy even from across the room.

“After all these years,” Lucio laughs, turning to face her with the stick of incense pinched between forefinger and thumb of his metal hand, “rebuffing my advances, refusing my requests… Doctor Jules finally brought me something _delicious_ for my birthday. I’ll have to thank him… if he lives out the night.”

The smell of the incense overwhelms her the closer Lucio approaches. It is such a potent, heady blend, and he is burning it in excess. In her minds eye she sees Asra scrubbing the card room table, his forearms pink, and that smell— _acacia and bistort, juniper and wormwood_ —still lingering in the air, still cloying the morning after Asra’s ritual. 

A familiar occurrence, repeated through time, always to return, no matter how often she cleans its stench from the walls. It is a smell that has long-haunted that space of the house; it is the blend Albert taught her to use to thin the world, to help her visit her Gate. 

Her eyes widen with panic at the thought:

_What is he doing with it?_

A crossroads, he had called her, and said, ‘ _you will be a perfect conduit._ ’

Panic and bile and _fear_ she has not often known (not even her death had inspired such fright in her) rises in the back of her throat, and Lucio is still three feet away from her but already she is shaking her head, and she cannot keep the trembling out of her voice: “No… no, Lucio, don’t you _dare_ —”

“First of all, ‘ _Red_ ,’” Lucio snarls, and she recoils from this wretched abuse of Ilya’s pet name for her—but she does not retreat far enough. A second time his hand snatches at her jaw and this time, when he tilts her head up to look at him, he is not gentle. “It’s _Count_ Lucio. And secondly… you have _no idea_ what I’d dare. What I have _already_ dared. Now shut up, and breathe in—”

Lightning-fast, the hand on her jaw seizes her hair in a fierce grip and forces her face down into a bow. His other hand—the golden claw, still clutching the incense—lowers until he can hold it beneath her face, only a few inches from her nose.

The smoke stings her eyes, tickles her throat; with each lungful, she feels herself slipping. The world, less solid—but it is too much, _too close_ , and she is grasping, clawing at this world, but it is like dangling from a precipice—gravity is against her.

“I can’t breathe!” she coughs. Ash flies into her face, smoke billows—the incense only glows brighter, a bright, conspiratory wink against the red carpet below. “You’ll suffocate me!”

“Oh, Miss Mooney, I promise I won’t,” Lucio says, tightening his grip in her hair. “There’s no gain for me in that. No, witch, I want to go to the place you visit right _before_ you suffocate.”

The edge of her vision darkens. Her heart pounds in her chest, still sluggish with sedative but beating frantically against the ribs that cage it, wild with panic. And her hands, clutching—what, the carpet? No, naught but air—dirt, rich and dark as night—fragrant needles of pine—something _cold—_

“You are going to take me there, witch,” Lucio asserts, the last words she hears before this world slips away like cupped water between fingers, “whether you like it or not.”

 

 

 

Everyone always describes the wind as _whispering_. As though it is a haunted voice, calling out, demanding attention. Beckoning towards something: the wound that scarred, or a new tempest of jagged edges, ready to cut.

On this wind, there are no whispers, no plaintive cries. No shrill regrets. It is only the wind. It passes through the trees and whips the hair from Aredhel’s forehead, the coldness of its touch stinging her cheeks, each exhale the shape of another ghost before it condenses over her eyes, freezes in her eyebrows and eyelashes. 

If she closed her eyes—if she were not so cold—she might be able to convince herself she was lying in bed. The wind here makes the same sound as the salty breeze that sweeps off the seaport in Vesuvia and through the cracks in Albert Mooney’s house. She has listened to the wind whistle through the inexhaustible hollows of that house for years. Like light leaking from beneath a door into a darkened room, it is a reminder that all things are porous—penetrable. No matter how she’d tried to seal the space around the frame, the window had always whispered.

Maybe that, more than anything else, is why the wind sounds haunted: it is not the voice of ghosts, but a reminder of all the things we seek to protect ourselves from. How permeable are the walls we build around ourselves! How destructible, our fortresses. The wind whistles through the window, the trees, all thresholds; the door cannot hold those things back wholly, and it can never hold them forever.

 

 

 

_How long did you think you could stay away? Did you honestly think you could keep away from this place forever?_

 

 

 

The snow is soft beneath her, and it holds her; her warmth has gnawed at the bank beneath and around her to carve for her a cradle. It clutches her so tightly to its frigid embrace that she must plant a hand in front of her to push herself free; the snap of the snowbank’s crusted surface stings her hand, and the resulting _crunch_ echoes through the trees.

And what trees! Formidable giants, they are. Swept by this perpetual gale and grown tall regardless. Scraggly spruce, dark pines… and here and there between them, a severed trunk from a tree long snapped, bare and bone-smooth from the wind that has swept away the last traces of its bark. As the wind presses them, the trees groan; snow falls upon snow, shaking free from green needles in the shape of a phantom.

Nearby, Lucio sniffs at the air like a bloodhound. He is so pale—the cream of his tunic and trousers—that were it not for the shine of his black boots and the red of his eyes, the storm would swallow him, and Aredhel would not be able to make him out at all.

He can see her, however, just fine.

“Good! You’re up.” 

With a snarls, he stomps towards her. 

Snow buckles, churns underneath her as Aredhel struggles out of the drift. She expects to find her legs heavy, and useless—but here, the body is a more subtle thing. Though she still cannot reach for her magic, she can move just fine. She wastes not a moment; she scrambles, kicking and clawing her way out of the snowdrift that has formed around her body and taking off for the trees.

The pine trees are taller than castle turrets; the snow falls from such impossible heights to the ground with an unearthly sigh. 

Aredhel’s gasps—frantic, panicked as she tries ( _too deep, too deep to run_ ) to fight her way through the snow, sinking past her ankle—echo along the mountainside. The air up here, so thin—she fights for every breath, her lungs burning with each frigid lungful—

“Oh no, you don’t.”

Something pulls at the nape of her neck—the press of the front of her dress against her throat knocks the wind out of her, leaving her gasping and breathless even before Lucio drags her backwards and onto her ass. When her body meets the ground behind her, her vision blackens.

“You are coming with me.”

He begins to drag her.

“I have grown,” a grunt of effort from him; she thrashes, she will not make this easy, “ _so_ weary of this form, this prison. For so long—it was too lovely to let go—but it serves me no longer. So I will fetch another,” and he wrenches her especially hard, “just like I did last time. And you are going to help me.”

The snow is cold below her, cutting against her backside and her legs as Lucio pulls—scrapes, really—her body over it. She realizes that—without having to be told—he is making his way uphill, up the mountainside. Peaking from the snowdrifts are the purple roots of the mountain’s arms. He has brought them so close to the doorway, the threshold—( _already the dread thing leaking under the door, this thing she has not been able to face_ )—they are not far.

She was wrong, not to be frightened of Lucio, before. But truthfully, there is nothing she fears more than what awaits them inside that mountain.

“Lucio, you _asshole_ , put me down! I swear, I will claw your eyes out of your head if you don’t let me go _right this minute!_ ”

She flails, twists in his grasp. Her heels dig into the snow, seeking some kind of leverage to help her wriggle free, or a way to strike him, but Lucio’s hold on collar her remains steady.

“No can do, ‘ _Red,_ ’” he spits, and in his mouth her nickname is an ugly thing; a blasphemy, a malediction. “Can’t get through your Gate without you—if I could, you would not still be breathing.” 

He pauses his assault on the mountain long enough to wrench her onto her stomach, pulling her close enough to his face to look him in the eye:

“Take comfort in the fact that you will be necessary a little while longer,” he sneers, “and use that time to make peace with your pagan gods.”

Then he yanks her to the ground again so roughly she cries out, and resumes his procession—up into the mountain, higher with the howling wind, the trees trembling like the pillars and priests of a temple about to be defiled.

 

 

 

_Perhaps, if you had not forsaken me, we would not be in this mess._

 

 

 

Through this boreal forest she is dragged until she is tossed, carelessly, upon the slate-grey threshold of the doorway. That which is not yet numb aches, both from the bite of the snow and the savage way that Lucio has dragged her.

Purple doors tower above them, the height of five men over. A hawthorn tree, carved in relief upon the stone, tangles its roots and flowering boughs about the seam that splits it. But there is no knob… and there is no lock.

“Now,” Lucio says, his hands on his hips, “how do I get in?”

“It’s a _door_ ,” Aredhel spits, from below. It is inevitable, now, what must come next; the door cannot protect her from what waits on the other side. If she refuses to help him, she will not stop him for long. She may as well get another dig in before he succeeds. 

Her cheeks are sparkling with frozen tears and powdered snow, but no matter the fear that grips her, when she meets Lucio’s eyes her own are as hard as the mountain.

“Are you so used to be waited upon you no longer remember how a _door_ works?”

Lucio shakes his head at her. “So feisty, Miss Mooney. So disobedient.”

And then she catches one of his boots right in her stomach.

But neither the gasp it rips from her mouth nor the pain that shoots through her abdomen are enough to distract her from the groaning before her, as Lucio places his hands flat against the stone and pushes. 

A sob spills past her lips unbidden; it has nothing to do with the kick she’s just received. Pain, she can handle; she has become, in these months with the plague, accustomed to it. No, this sorrow is something else. For more than a decade she has worked to be good at controlling herself, but it has always been harder to keep her emotions in check in realms beyond the Waking World—and out of all those possible realms, she is _here._

The door does not resist; it gives. Inch by inch, it yields.

The wind quiets. 

And a bell rings. 

In place of the sweet smell of pine? Acacia and bistort, juniper and worm wood. 

( _She will never get the scent out of the card room._ )

Other smells, too. Herbs, dried and bundled, but their aroma is strong even from across the room. A mineral scent, crystals lining the shelves. Worn parchment labels. Desiccated smell of rare insects, valuable for cordials, preserved in vials. The oil burning in the colored lamps. Brona's soap. And the loamy, dusty smell coming from the doorway against the far wall, the one room in the house she was never permitted to enter. 

And behind the counter to the left—

_Albert._

 

 

 

A bell rings—Aredhel _hates_ the sound, how it announces all the comings and goings in this strange and suffocating house. She has not yet been bold enough to sneak out, but when she does, she knows it will have to be through a window. Who knows how deeply her guardians sleep? She cannot, _will not_ risk being caught, when she makes (at last!) her great escape.

She is ten years old, newly abandoned; to her, the city is an oyster, waiting to be shucked. But her excitement does not make her sloppy—her old life, across the sea, taught her caution. How to slip, unnoticed, far away.

(This time she will not come back.)

“Aredhel?”

She is already across the room, halfway up the stairs to the second floor, when Brona calls her name.

(Her old life across the sea had taught her caution, the importance of _appearances._ She will slip away, out of their grasp, but for now, best not be too brazen; show, at least, some signs of deference.)

Hand on the banister, she turns to face them, but does not speak. 

Her Aunt and Uncle (or so they claim to be) are standing side by side. They do not hold hands, but there is an unmistakeable closeness between them, a unity; Aredhel despises it, almost as much as she despises the kindness (the _pity_ ) in their eyes.

“You are gifted, Aredhel. Sneaky enough to fool the vendors, but not us.” Brona unties the pursestrings from her belt, and rests it, gently, upon the counter. The jangle of coin is noticeably more subdued than it was when they left the house a few hours ago. “You should know that your Uncle doubled back, and paid for all the things you stole.”

A cold fear seizes her; her grip on the bannister tightens. 

She has been stealing for so long she hardly even thinks about it; it has become second-nature. A bright and flashy thing attracts her interest and it is in her pocket the next moment. This is no simple slight of hand: what little magic she knows, what she has taught herself, turns the eyes of her marks away. They do not notice her. Later, they will not recognize her, when she comes to take once more. 

She had been so _good_ at it her father had rarely caught her, but when he had… well.

There was a reason he’d dropped her here, with her ‘Aunt’ and her ‘Uncle.’

“We can’t stop you,” Albert says, with a shrug. “Neither of us, really, intend to try. You will be welcome in your home, whatever you do.” Though his expression is stern his lips betray the barest hint of a smile; he holds his hand aloft and with a snap of his fingers summons a bright fire to his palm. “But if you want to learn—learn older and more powerful magics than the kind that you used today—if you want to be my apprentice, you will no longer steal. That is not what we use our magic for in this house. Is that understood?” 

Aredhel’s father has not brought her here to _learn_ ; he has brought her here to rid himself of her. These people—Albert, Brona—they are strangers to her, and outside, the world his her oyster. But the world is so wide… and she has never had a teacher, before. Never even met another magician, until her father dragged her across sea to Albert’s doorstep. 

She has known Albert only three days; known _of_ him for at all for only a few months. She is still wary, of him and Brona both. But she has long wanted to learn magic—even though the idea of doing so made her feel guilty almost as often as it made her thrill.

He is promising her something she has wanted… she may wait, at least, to see if he delivers on it.

“Yes. Okay, Uncle Albert. No more stealing.”

Albert nods, offers a smile. “And another thing,” he adds. His voice is serious, still, but not threatening; at the edges of it, an unfamiliar warmth.

“You live in our house now, young lady,” he says, and his chin tilts upwards with pride. “This is not a place for you to be ashamed of the gift you’ve been given—here, you will not be threatened for it, or forced to hide it. Here, we celebrate our gifts.” At a nudge from Brona, he adds, hastily, “As long as we use them responsibly.” 

His head tilts to the side… his stoicism loses its battle with the smile curling his mouth. 

“Can you try to do that for us, do you think?”

Aredhel’s eyes have fallen to the floor; she cannot bear the look of Albert, of his _smile._ She cannot— _will_ not—give Albert and Brona the satisfaction of seeing her weep no matter how kind they have been to her thus far… and she is so close to weeping. 

He makes it sound so simple. ‘ _Celebrated._ ’ As though she can forget all the things her father told her, all the times she felt so keenly Nemain’s absence in the blink of an eye.

But she will try. “Okay, Uncle Albert.”

Ahead, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Brona give Albert a second shove of her elbow. 

“Ah! Fine, fine, alright. Aredhel? I have something for you. Will you come back down?”

Aredhel hastily wiped the tears from her eyes, concealing the gesture (convincingly, she hoped) by pushing her hair back from her face. Below, in the shop, Albert has made his way behind the glass counter; bent, he digs in one of the drawers beneath the display. Brona stands tall, eyes kind, but far enough from the counter and Albert both to give Aredhel the space she needs, the space she is comfortable with.

(They had learned—quickly—that she does not welcome close proximity.)

As she crosses the room, Albert pulls loose a box. Beneath the lid it is lined in soft, plush black velvet, and folded into the velvet is an egg, brown-specked blue, and just small enough to fit comfortable in her outstretched palm—which is where Albert puts it. 

It surprises Aredhel to find it is warm. 

She hardly dares breathe—she absolutely does not dare _assume._ Does not hope. Still, she cannot keep the tremble of excitement out of her voice:

“What is it?” she asks, looking up into Albert's face. 

“Nothing yet,” Albert says. “Just a construct. But if you care for it—if you devote yourself to it, keep it safe—it might become a friend. A familiar, even.”

“We know you don't trust us quite yet,” Brona says, softly. “That's understandable. But we thought that you should not be alone, here; if you cannot yet trust us, perhaps you can trust him.”

It is a kindness they do not owe her—a kindness she probably does not deserve. But any guilt she might feel is swept away by tumultuous tide of excitement: between her hands, beneath the blue-and-brown eggshell, the quickening of some new soul. It blossoms the longer she cups the eggs between her palms. Faintly, heard not through space but some other dimension, she hears a distant voice, small and curious but calling out for her. Reaching for her heart.

Her father had forbade her from even a pet. ' _Familiars are for witches, and no daughter of mine will become a witch._ ’ And this, this is no pet—a twinned being. A constant companion. Someone to confide in, protect; someone who might watch over her, protect her in turn.

“What form will it take?” Aredhel asks.

And there it is—that smile Albert wore, sometimes, in the beginning—reserved, like he was afraid that too expressive an outward show of happiness would disarm her… like he was keeping a secret, pulling the curtain back (but only a few inches) on a new and brilliant world, someplace marvelous, warm, _safe_. A twinkle in his eye.

“You'll have to wait until he hatches to find out.”

 

 

 

But Malak is not here, now. He is gone away, somewhere she cannot reach him. Before her now is only Albert—Albert, in this place she has avoided for so long, this place where he will forever linger. 

Of course—she knows, she _knows_ —it is not _really_ the shop, this place she has found herself in. Not really Albert, either. But here, the Magician takes on his appearance like a suit of skin, steps into him as easily as he takes on the cadence of Albert’s voice, and all his mannerisms and familiar gestures. The twinkle in his eyes, seagreen behind his spectacles, corners wrinkling with the hint of a smile—a smile hinting a secret.

(The curtain pulls back and she is in a completely different world, even if it looks to be the same.) 

…It was not that she was an unimaginative girl, when she had first come to this place and shaped it. It is just that the shop—for her—was the most sacred and magical place, where she had someone to teach her and a family to love her. Her life had been a storm, a tree tossed in a taiga, a vile wind, before she had found shelter in Vesuvia, in this port city—a literal safe harbor—with Brona, and with Albert. 

From the start, Albert was _the_ magician: singular to her in so many ways.

(Asra had once called his gate juvenile. She would never tell him that hers was just the shrine of a little girl, pleased—at last!—to be loved. To be home.)

The Magician has told her he is not fixed in this guise—that it is Aredhel, in fact, and all her reservations and regrets, that keep him in this form. She is not entirely convinced that is so. Though the Magician is not really Albert, she can hardly look at him; she has not come here—to the source of her magic, the entryway to other realms, this font of wisdom—since Albert’s death, five years ago. She had returned only once… and then, only to yell. She had called not-Albert selfish, unkind, foolish; the Magician had more or less ejected her from his realm for her juvenile antics and slammed the door behind her.

_You bade me take this form. If it has come to distress you so, change it. You are more than capable, Aredhel. Didn't I teach you? Shapes are easy magic. Until then, do not return if you only intend to level more misplaced abuse and accusations. You are lucky that among the Arcana, I am one of the few capable of patience._

“What the hell is this?”

So lost is Aredhel in her own regrets, recollections, cycles stamped and echoing through time, repetitions she cannot seem to escape—an old wound re-salted, traumas revisited—Albert's face smiling at her, again, as he used to (a ghost’s smile)—that she has forgotten, momentarily, how it is she got here. 

Here, where she was first not made to feel like a mistake, unnatural, an aberration. Where she was loved. 

 _Here._ A place of solace, transformed into a place of darkness and dread. 

Lucio’s boots slap against the tiled floor as he stalks across the shop. He sniffs disdainfully at one of the tall shelves, cluttered with small vials of rare powders and essences, before upending the whole unit with a shove. The sounds of the vials hitting the floor is like the shiver of a chandelier. When Lucio turns back to Aredhel, stomping towards her, each of his steps sends the scatterd vials a-quiver all over again. 

"A clever trick, witch, but I have visited the realms of the Arcana before—I will not be fooled so easily. _Where have you brought me?_ "

“She has brought you precisely where you wished to go, Red Plague.”

Lucio turns to the sound of Albert’s voice, looking at the Magician with renewed interest. “Is that so?” he asks, cooly. “In my experience, the rest of your kind don’t usually take on guises that are so… unassuming.”

Albert laughs, a light sound, and shrugs. "The realms of the Arcana are malleable, and can be shaped by associations and impressions of particularly strong petitioners." The Magician turns to Aredhel, wearing Albert's skin, and favoring her with the same look of fathomless, boundless pride her uncle would get when she mastered a particularly difficult spell. "Aredhel has always been very strong."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Lucio replies with a sneer. "She didn't put up much of a fight with me." He glances at Aredhel with one eyebrow cocked, his look cool and condescending, before he turns his attention back to the Magician. "So who are you supposed to be then, old man?"

"The Magician,” not-Albert says, simply. “ _Her_ Magician, anyway. It is not so hard, after all, taking shapes. Her memory of Albert Mooney is vivid even still, all these years later—and I admit I was well acquainted with him myself.” But then the Magician’s eyes (not Albert’s, but a perfect facsimile of them) find Aredhel’s, and his expression is uncommonly kind… and a little bit sad. 

“I knew him well enough to know, Aredhel Mooney MacAllister, that Albert would wish you to know that what happened was not your fault. And your fate need not be his."

She cannot speak, can barely breathe at the sight of him. ‘ _Help me_ ,’ she begs, her arms still curled over the soreness where Lucio kicked her. Tears spill from her eyes; still, her magic reaches across the shop, trying to reach the Magician with words that Lucio will not overhear. ‘ _Please. He means to kill me_.’

‘ _You do not need my help. You are strong enough_.’

All of this transpires in the space of a breath; Lucio will not be silenced for long.

"Oh, hell—really? _Barf_."

Albert’s jaw sets, his face hardens with impatience, and the Magician turns his eyes back to Lucio. 

"So you're supposed to be—what—her father? Is this your little trick shop, then?" Lucio continues, barely able to contain the sadistic delight in his voice. The echoes of mockery exude from his very posture as he walks the perimeter of the room, casually knocking jars and glass instruments off the shelves. He laughs, high and shrill. "You say she’s strong? I think you lie, on behalf of your servant, Magician. This place is nothing more than the dream of a lost and fearful little girl."

A glass orb shatters against the tile; the sound pulls Albert’s features into a wince.

“It is the opposite, actually,” the Magician says, watching Lucio wreck the room. “Albert is an avatar—an embodiment of the way Aredhel sees magic. For Albert, in the end, was the best and worst of what she believes a magician to be: equal parts magnificent and dangerous, light and dark, capable of withering a soul or making it shine like starfire. Too young she learned the seductive allure of the most powerful magics, and the heaviness of price they exact on the soul.” 

‘ _I am sorry_ ,’ Aredhel wants to tell him. ‘ _I should have been kinder. I know, now, what it means to have someone to protect_.’ But she is silent, wordless—what difference would it make, if she says these things? It is not _really_ Albert.

“Wait, wait.” Lucio laughs again, a piercing giddy trill. “Are you telling me—am I getting this straight?—that the reason you hate _him_ ,” he says, pointing accusingly at the Magician, “is because your Uncle dabbled in—what?—probably some shallow-end, junior-league dark arts bullshit?”

“Tell me, Miss Mooney, did he… use sacrifices? Harm living things, in pursuit of his ends? Treat his fellow humans as experiments?” And then Lucio grins, and though it bears no resemblance to Albert’s it carries a similar message: it speaks of secrets, of things withheld. “Is that why this little family reunion has you so twisted?”

“No,” Aredhel replies, shaking her head. Albert had toyed with those theories, played with the ideas of what he might do to bring Brona back, but he had turned all this speculation inward; he had only ever harmed himself. Her Uncle had been many things—had many flaws—but he had not been that. “No, he would never.”

Lucio cackles.

“Oh, sweetheart, have I got news for _you!_ Magic is not the only profession that exacts a debt of blood.” He is smiling so wide it is tugging at his war-tattoos; his tongue wets his lips before he catches his lower lip between his teeth, almost coy. 

“Do you think Doctor Jules' hands are so clean?"

“Ilya is nothing like Albert.” The retort comes quickly. And it works against Lucio! What had hoped to accomplish, invoking his name? Aredhel thinks of his gentle hands—healer’s hands—his warm smile, and it gives her new strength. “He is a Doctor. He remedies pain, he does not inflict it. For months, he has only been—”

“Oh, Miss Mooney— _Red!_ —you can’t seriously tell me you don’t know?” Lucio smirks at her, folding his arms over his chest. “That he hasn't told you?”

She is as still as the surface of a pond before the skipping-stone falls.

“Hasn't told me what?”

Across the room, the Magician wearing Albert’s face stiffens. “You are here to bargain with me, Red Plague, are you not?” he says, but Albert’s voice is no longer so cool, so collected. “There is no need to—”

“ _No_.” It is a command, punctuated by the way Lucio holds out his hand in flat refusal. Audacious as it is, it buttons Albert’s lip. “No. You two have had your little reunion. And she won’t last long, anyway, after our bargain is struck. She deserves to know the truth, before the end, don’t you think?”

Albert’s face falls; anxiety tightens the muscles in Aredhel’s gut. 

“The truth about _what_ , Lucio?”

He turns his red-stained gaze back to her, whistling through his teeth. “Holy hell, this keeps getting better. You were going to _run off with him_ , and he didn’t have the balls to tell you. That’s—you know, that’s _so_ like him. Cowardly.” Lucio turns away, cycles through seven different grins, each more delighted and more hideous than the last. When he turns back to her, the look on his face sends a shiver down her spine.

“Didn't you wonder what he was doing at the castle, all those days and nights? Did you think he was really just holed up in the library with my _books_? Oh, no. His research was far more hands on—and I can assure you, his patients were not treated gently.”

The realms of the Arcana are malleable. And they are at her Gate, but Lucio is no new pilgrim, a repeat petitioner, and the force of his glee warps the space around him. 

The image of the house shudders, flickers. It does not fade, but suddenly she is overwhelmed with the impression of vaulted ceilings far below ground, putrid air, floors cut with drains to channel and carry spilt blood. A wretched lift of wrought iron; beloved hands turn the key.

The image is gone in a flash. 

But in this mimicry of Albert Mooney’s house, Aredhel can hear screaming—shrieks of terror, tormented cries—echoing, as it would in that horrid space:

_“Please, no, DON’T—make it stop, oh, god, please, end it—”_

The panicked pleas of animals being led to slaughtered, wild with fear, delirious with pain. 

“Let me tell you, you haven't heard shrill until you've heard someone being vivisected. Cut up with their insides poked around while their hearts are still beating, torn to pieces by people who were once their colleagues.” Again, that shrill laugh—he is laughing _at her_ , Aredhel realizes. Mocking her for her stupidity, for the blindness of her love. 

“Isn't medicine absolutely barbaric?”

“No,” Aredhel protests, but her voice is thin. “You are lying, to unsettle me.”

“Am I? I am Count. You think I don't know what goes on in my own castle?”

She thinks of the drawings he'd brought to her apartment above the shop. Then, she'd hardly thought twice about them—‘ _medical illustrations_ ,’ he’d told her—but now....

She looks, desperately, into Alberts face. ‘ _Tell me this is a lie. Tell me he lies_.’ 

It is a desperate gambit, and a fruitless one; deep down, she already knows the answer. The Magician only stares at her, solemn and quiet.

 

 

 

 

Asra does not believe her when she says Albert’s house is haunted. But Asra does not know all of the house's secrets, its peculiar moods: the way it swallows and then spits up doorways at will, the haphazard rooms tacked on to the main structure, rooms that have no right to exist as they do but for the way the arcane can tug the warp and weft of physical space, twist it around itself in knots. These rooms that the house has kept closed to her, littered (even as they are) with her inheritance. (Still the shop takes on the loamy, dusty smell of the room that hides behind the far wall, the one room in the house she was never permitted to enter, though its doorway is now invisible.) Dangerous elixirs, family heirlooms. Her bedroom—the one Albert had conjured as if out of thin air—its door unyielding, dust in the bed frame, locked behind a hidden door behind a bookshelf. And the _roof_ —!

(This is why the wind sounds so peculiar when it whispers through Albert Mooney's house—on the inside, it is cavernous, limitless, deep. All these spaces lingering, hollow, their secrets penetrable—but not to _her_. Whatever the house is, it does not recognize Aredhel as ‘ _master._ ’)

This house was given life by Albert Mooney but it has become a strange entity all its own, with Albert's whims and wishes built in to the very rhythm of its heartbeat. A strange entity all its own, but here, it yields to her, if not her touch than to her emotions. 

Her panic. 

It is no surprise at all, then, when the walls begin to close in, the space of the shop narrowing. 

 

 

 

 

It is difficult to breathe. 

She had thought Ilya gentle, kind, good; his hands, in the end, bloodier than hers. Bloodier than _Asra’s._ And he had never breathed a _word_ of it—he had looked her in the face and lied to her, _lay with her_ —

_"You don't know the first thing about me."_

Had he—had he intended to tell her, only to change his mind? ‘ _That’s so like him._ Cowardly.’ Had he deceived her deliberately? In—what—the pursuit of _pleasure_? 

Had he decided not to tell her before, or after she'd made clear her intention to bed him?

For Ilya, she had turned on Asra; for Ilya, she has forsaken her home. She had come to the palace—headstrong, it is true—putting herself in danger to make sure he was safe. She has loved him; no—she has loved a lie. A ghost. A dream of a man.

He is no more the man she thought he was than the Magician is Albert.

_She was going to run away with him—!_

It is too much to wrap her mind around, too much pain to bear. The walls are closing in around her; the book shelves scratch against the tile and splinter as the walls force them in. 

And Lucio is still talking through his sickle-grin. 

“I wonder how he might have treated _you_ , if you ended up in his lab. You know, they source bodies directly from the Lazaret—that’s probably why he spirited you out of there so quickly. Ohh, and I had given Valdemar _specific orders_ to fetch you with haste, but you know what they say. If you want something done right….”

Aredhel… floats out of her body, she can't feel a thing. All those drawings of brains like maps of distant lands—how many still jiggled in their skulls as Ilya had sketched them? 

In the end, it is the anxious clench in her stomach—not from Lucio’s earlier kick, but from the building urge to retch—that calls her back into herself.

But then— _then_ , she sees Lucio, leering at her. He looks so spectacularly proud of himself for rattling her—grudgingly, she supposes he has earned that. She is yet dizzy, the hot blade of betrayal still twisting in her gut. Past him, though, she sees Albert—the Magician nods in reassurance. 

_‘I am here, but you must do this on your own. He is the servant of another, and I cannot interfere with his fate.’_

And that—that's fine. She has made her peace with that, now. This darkness—whatever she must do to claw herself free from Lucio's grasp—there is no point fighting it, any longer. Ilya, Asra—Aredhel herself—they are sinners, all. There is no point any longer in preserving her misplaced notions of purity and nonviolence. 

And after that display—after that revelation—she is ready. Her hatred for Lucio burns white-hot; she sharpens it to a cutting edge.

She knows, now, what she must do. 

Lucio is still grinning at her. Satisfied with his work, he leans his elbows back on the glass counter, and peers at the Magician over his shoulder.

“Women, am I right? So delicate.” He shakes his head, tsking lightly. “Now, about our bargain…”

Aredhel grits her teeth; her eyes meet Lucio’s, defiant.

“I am not _delicate_ ,” she insists. It is an old, familiar refrain; she has been telling Asra as much for months, and it is no less true now than it was then. “After all, I’m the only one to survive your plague.” With a cheeky grin, she adds, “To survive _you._ ”

Lucio’s grin transforms into a snarl, teeth bared. “Not for long, witch.”

“You are not nearly as omnipotent as you think,” she laughs. 

He is red-faced, roaring: “I am a force to be reckoned with!”

“You are a force I have _already_ reckoned with, and defeated.” Aredhel tilts her head to the side, tip of her nose wrinkling with mischief. “Don’t you want to know how I did it? How I recovered?”

“You have _not_ won, this is _not_ _over_ —”

“Asra figured it out.” 

And for the first time, since all of this began, she is proud, so proud she feels she might burst with it. Asra, her apprentice; Asra, who has exceeded her in almost every way. Asra… who deserved, in the end, to be treated far more kindly. If she survives this, she will owe him a thousand apologies. 

“He’s only been practicing magic properly for _three years,_ but that’s still less than the time it took him to figure out how to undo your plague. You were defeated by an _amateur._ ” 

(Not totally, not entirely. Ilya, wherever he is, still suffers from it; but she is aiming to incense Lucio, not necessarily to be truthful.)

Lucio scoffs, folding his arms over his chest. “Asra’s magic is meant for parlor tricks for court ladies, for the witless and easily amused. You are lying to me. This feat is beyond him.”

“Oh, but it wasn’t,” Aredhel says, catching her lip playfully between her teeth. “And you helped him. You welcomed him into your palace to find the answer, and he found it, right under your nose, and _kept it from you_.”

Aredhel shakes her head, throws it back with a laugh. “You think you are so powerful, Lucio. So indomitable. And yet, in the end, all it took was an apprentice to stop you. You are nothing, Lucio. Your gifts, these bargains? Are _nothing_. And if Asra can accomplish so much when he fears my death, just _imagine what he will do to you, after you have killed me.”_

“I will destroy him!” Lucio shrieks, pulling away from the counter and stalking towards her. “I will ruin him as I ruined the others!”

“You most certainly will not,” Aredhel says. “He has the love of your doctor. Your _wife_. They will not let him fail. When forced to choose between you they will choose him; they will turn on you as quickly as those eels in your moat, blind and frenzied at the smell of spilled blood. And when Nadia takes your place—”

This time, she sees it coming… but no matter how she prepares herself for the blow, Lucio’s kick to her stomach still knocks the wind out of her, dizzies her.

“ _Noddy_ ,” Lucio says, through gritted teeth, “will not live out the night. Valerius will see to that. _Jules_ ,” he says, punctuating his name with another kick to her stomach, “your slippery little _paramour,_ is unlikely to survive my plague for much longer… and if he does, I know a particular Quaestor who has been eagerly awaiting the chance to take him apart. And _Asra,_ ” he says, with a third kick, “Asra will have the privilege of dying alone. Of watching me devour everyone and everything he loves for his insolence. And I am going to start,” Lucio says, and there—yes, at last—his clawed hand comes to her throat, “with _you_.”

The golden points on the ends of his fingers pinch— _hard_. He is truly angry, now, and here—in this other realm—his body is not weakened (if it every really was) by the plague. He is strong, and hideous… furious enough to be sloppy, for his golden hand to clench just enough to puncture both skin and dream alike. 

The power that surges through her veins like the roar of winter melt down a mountainside is how she knows that in the waking world, she is bleeding. 

_It is enough._

The last thing she sees as the gate fades around her is Albert smiling, and in her mind she can hear his voice as clearly as when he lived:

‘ _Knock him dead, sweetheart._ ’

 

 

 

Towards the end, as the light of his life dimmed, Albert Mooney had been a horrid old warlock—but Aredhel would be lying if she said she had not learned any of his tricks.

There is power in the blood. The same blood that flowed through Albert Mooney’s veins flows through Aredhels, blood of the Mooney Clan, generations of sorcerers. A crimson tide, pushing and pulling with the tide of her pulse: a great reservoir of magic at her disposal. On the other side, in Lucio’s bedroom, she is little more than intent and starfire, her skin and flesh an afterthought. 

She has never felt this way before—she knows it means she is at the apex of her power. And she remembers full well why she needs to call upon it: ‘ _Asra will have the privilege of dying alone.’_

 _‘No,’_ she thinks, already pulling the power from the blood that spills from her neck, ‘ _you will not touch him. You will not harm any of them._ ’

She is strong, hideous, furious; her anger is raw and unrefined and the _hurt_ is still so real (‘ _you don’t know me at all,_ ’ he had said, and in the end, she supposes, he was right) and the temptation—to be not only violent, but vengeful—is dangerous, _seductive_ —

She had meant, only, to disarm him. To push him out of the dream and away. 

But the scream Lucio makes is ungodly, shrill enough that she brings her hands to cover her ears—only to find ( _of course_ ) that they are still bound. It is, she knows, the scream of a dying thing, a damned thing, and it is too late for her to take it back. All she can do is watch as her magic burns, too hot to extinguish, no matter how Lucio tries to put it out. He falls onto his luxurious bed, writhing in agony, but it does nothing to smother the fire that consumes him; the flame does not even scorch the bedsheets. He smokes, however; the air in the room grows thick and grey. And the _smell_ —

‘ _I had no choice,’_ she tells herself. ‘ _I did what I could. He threatened Asra, and Ilya—’_

But the thought of Ilya and all his sins—the lies he has allowed to come between them—has her doubling over. Now is not the time for tears of grief for what might have been, not with the room smoking, the evidence of her assassination (for that is what it is, has become, will be called) everywhere. She should get to her feet, she should _get out_ , but she cannot hold back the sob that shakes her.

_Ilya. Oh, Ilya._

“Aredhel!”

_Hold on, love, I am coming._

The bedroom is full of smoke and mirrors (the better for the late Count to admire himself in) but this is no magic—when arms circle her and draw her close they are real, and Ilya’s grasp on her is solid. 

Aredhel cannot help it. Even at this touch, a touch she has longed for so long, a touch meant to comfort—

‘ _I wonder how he might have treated you, if you ended up in his lab. Isn't medicine absolutely barbaric?_ ’

—she flinches. In that moment she cannot bear the thought of Ilya’s hands upon her, hands that held scalpels and forceps, that cut, and cut…. Their love is only just consummated, but already the taste of it has soured. 

She flinches from his touch, and there is no hiding it. 

Ilya stiffens. "Aredhel?" His voice sounds so small—a child's voice, unsure among the percussion of Lucio's bones cracking and the hissing of his insides as the heat of the fire eats away at him. “Aredhel, I have you... I’m here, it is alright—”

 _Nothing_ is alright. Probably things won't ever be alright ever again. The brightness of the dream they hard shared—that imagined life neither of them deserve—shrinking to a pinprick, a distant star in a night sky, beautiful and impossible to reach.

Murderers, after all, are rarely afforded such happy endings. 

It is this loss, more than anything else, that breaks her; with a sob she caves, curves into Ilya's warmth, presses her face to his chest. The tension leaves his shoulders, and he holds her to him more soundly. She can feel him breathe in—the tip of his nose pressed to her scalp—before he releases it, and begins to shake her shoulders.

“Red, come on—”

—the way Lucio had looked at her, _leered_ at her when he used that name; he has desecrated it, now, _profaned_ it, and it only makes her tremble harder—

“—quick now, into the corner.”

She is frozen, immovable stone—Lucio burns on the bed and her mind works to think of any spell, any hex, any curse, anything she can use to take it back. To turn back time so that she had never even come here. 

(She can feel her neck, her cheeks, flush with shame at the thought: she wishes, just a little, that Asra and Ilya had let her die, rather than suffer through this, the wounds of old traumas ripped wide, new lies lashed atop them.)

But there is no spell—not in Albert's books nor, she suspects, the entire oeuvre of mankind’s arcane accomplishments—that can turn the massive wheel of time backward. 

She is here. She is here, she has done this thing, and she _knows_ , now, that the life she had wanted for herself was a lie, anyway—why, then, does its passing grieve her so?

Ilya does not wait for her to come to her senses; he lowers his arms around her waist then hoists her to her feet. Aredhel is pliant; she allows him to lead her, numb and speechless, to the far corner of the room, opposite the door, facing Lucio's massive, ostentatious portrait. 

Ilya squeezes her hand, looks into her face, but she cannot meet his gaze. Worry lines his face before he kneels, fumbling frantically around the pictures frame. 

“Somewhere around here, there has to be— _aha_.”

There's a click; the portrait swings an inch away from the wall. Ilya wraps his hands around the frame's edge and, with a grunt, pulls the painting forward. Hollowed into the wall behind it is a small passageway, just barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through. 

Ilya casts a nervous look to the doorway, through the smoke of burnt flesh; no one has (as yet) followed him in. 

“Come on, Aredhel,” he says, his hands again on her waist (it is strange, isn't it, how she now both loves and loathes that feeling) guiding her into the passage; the air is so cool and clear. “In you go.”

She is numb, pliant; she obeys. Her grief is too large to contend with much else. At least here it is cool; at least here, the hungry flames that consume the late Count do not threaten to blister her face. But after a few steps, she has enough presence of mind to realize that _her_ steps are the only ones she hears; she turns.

Ilya has a hand braced on either side of the tunnel’s entrance… but his eyes are fixed to the bedroom door.

“Ilya?”

He turns to the sound of his name which echoes strangely through the tunnel behind her; the fire still licking Lucio's body casts shadows and cuts crimson on his face. He nods behind her, a sharp jut of his chin. 

“The way forward is easy, I think,” he says, quickly. “The palace is full of passages like this. I’m not sure where it will lead you, but once you get there, you just have to use your magic—glamor yourself, like you did before—”

“Are you not coming with me?” 

Ilya does not speak, but the look in his eyes is answer enough.

A fear grips her, and it is as cold as her fire is hot. He is not coming with her. _He is not coming with her._ What fool notion has he gotten into his head now? She is frightened for him, more than she fears for herself. So often— _too_ often—he has been reckless. 

She wishes, a little, that Asra had let her die—but he had not, and she is here, now, and it is Ilya, really, who saved her—Ilya whose touch she has recoiled from, but whom ( _impossibly! incredibly!_ ) she needs. 

(‘ _I love you too,_ ’ she had said, in his lap, in the dungeon, and gods help her, she’d meant it—still means it, despite everything. What else is this pain inside of her, but the bloom of a love that has sprung fresh thorns?)

“No," she says, gripping his wrist, shaking her head. "No. Ilya, please, don't leave me—"

"I love you," he says, untangling her hand from his wrist and squeezing it in his own. “It'll be alright. I will make it alright—I will protect you, I promise. Please, I love you—go."

‘ _You know I love you, right?_ ’ he had asked—confessed—before laying his hands on her and pulling the sickness out of her, a spell he could not even rightly know would work, a spell that he knew full well could kill him.

Her voice cracks, high pitched, on the edge of hysteria. "You only say that when you're about to do something foolish.”

Ilya has never looked quite so wretched as he does when she makes that accusation. His face twists in pain; she can feel his hand—still holding hers—tremble. He gives one last look towards the bedroom door over his shoulder… then grabs her, pulling her into his arms. 

This time, she does not flinch.

His kiss is desperate, and hungry—he kisses as though he is stealing something. As though it will be his last chance. 

"I promise," he tells her, lips brushing against hers, "this is the least foolish thing I've ever done."

But then he pushes her back into the passage—and slams the portrait shut. 

" _No!_ " Her voice is the cry of a banshee, bouncing off the walls of the tunnel; she cannot even recognize it as her own. "Ilya! Ilya, don’t you dare!"

But it is already too late. As she stumbles forward in the dark, as her fingers search for the switch or catch that will swing it open, she can already hear the scrape of heavy furniture on the other side of the portrait, jamming it shut. 

 


	12. Last Rites (All the Prayers of My Loose Heart)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If he thinks I’m going to let him get away with this,” Aredhel hisses (an oath given up to the dark, a promise to clutch to her chest) as her fingers fist in the cloth of her dress that still reeks of smoke, “he’s got another thing coming.”

How long does she lie in the dark, too weak to do anything but choke down her own sobs? He is gone—done something _foolish,_ again, and once more it is _her fault_ —

_‘I wonder how he might have treated you, if you ended up in his lab. Isn't medicine absolutely barbaric?’_

—and all of that—those terrible things that Lucio said—they don’t even matter anymore, not one lick, not while Ilya is in danger and it is _her fault._

But she takes her grief and turns it to coal, a red-hot fury within her, enough to burn the tears from her cheeks as she clutches her lead-heavy knees to her chest and stares into the wall of the narrow passage she had been _abandoned_ in:

“If he thinks I’m going to let him get away with this,” Aredhel hisses (an oath given up to the dark, a promise to clutch to her chest) as her fingers fist in the cloth of her dress that still reeks of smoke, “he’s got another thing coming.”

 

 

 

How long does she sit in the dark, eyes closed, measuring her breathing… slowing her heart beat, reaching, _grasping_ for her magic beyond the walls Lucio’s sedative has built around her?

She funnels her fury into a finely points tool: she wills feeling into her limbs, but she cannot, no matter how she flexes her reach, get to the source of her magic. But she has to, she must—if she does not get her magic back she is hopeless, _useless_ , and she cannot be so weak, not when Ilya is in danger.

How long does she sit…?

( _her fault_ )

…too long.

“Didn’t the Doctor confess?”

Aredhel’s eyes fly open. There is only the barest hint of a crack between the painting and the passage, a violent slash of light from the bedroom beyond, but it is enough to make out the muffled voices beyond it.

(Ilya is gone—done something foolish, she knows now—confessed to a crime he has not committed. But she will be powerless to help him if she is apprehended herself.)

‘ _Please_ ,’ Aredhel thinks, ‘ _please, let them be ignorant of this door_.’

“Yeah,” another voice responds, “but Consul Valerius just wants us to check. See if we can find a murder weapon, or some other kind of evidence.”

The first voice hisses in response. “What kind of murder weapon do you use to _set someone on fire?_ ”

“I don’t know, _Harold_ , that’s what we’re here to find out.”

Aredhel’s heart leaps into her throat: two slender shadows cut across the light beneath the painting, those dark gashes widening as the footsteps beyond the passage become grow louder. (The only thing that separates Aredhel from the intruders is a stretch of canvas, a smattering of paint—barely enough to conceal the way her breathing quickens and shallows as her body winds like a spring.)

“Now, what did the Consul say?”

“A button, I think—near the bottom—”

_No._

No, this is not how this ends: she will not be discovered hiding in the dark like a snake—like a _mouse_ , all wide-eyed and frightened, all her plans shredded to dust. Ilya—whatever his faults, and surely they are _many_ (though not, perhaps, as numerous as hers)—is the only reason she yet breathes. She owes him her life, a blood debt she must honor no matter how complicated and tangled with anguish her feelings towards him have become.

She is too good—she is too _prideful_ —to allow a couple of low-life palace guards to prevent her from repaying that debt.

 

 

 

…the painting clicks open.

The light of the Count’s bedroom nearly blinds her—but this shock of light (and the pain that companies it) is not as terrible as the smell that overwhelms her. Surely, Aredhel thinks, they have removed Lucio’s body… but the acrid scent of burnt flesh still saturates the air, and it takes every ounce of self control she has not to double over and vomit at the repulsive evidence of her own reckless magic.

But she cannot retch, she cannot recoil. She cannot so much as _flinch._ She must remain absolutely still, if she is not to be seen… if she wants her illusion spell, the feeble, gossamer-thin net that it is, to hold.

“Woah.”

Three feet to her right, the first guard has stepped into the tunnel; she cannot make out his figure but out of the corner of her eye she can see the shape of his shadow. His footsteps echo through the passage as he grows closer. She is pressed to the passage wall as tight as a lover; she prays her magic is strong enough to lead the guard (gently, without arousing suspicion) around her flattened form.

By some miracle, the magic holds. But as the guard passes in front of her (close enough that she can feel the armor on his legs stir and  very nearly snag on the hem of her skirt) she catches a glimpse of his face by the light of his torch.

Aredhel’s heart leaps into her throat; if she were not holding herself so perfectly still, holding her breath, that breath might catch. The guard looks to be no more than a boy… he cannot be a day past seventeen.

His voice is full of childish wonder when he cries, gleefully, “Harold, its _deep_.”

She hopes—prays, on the off-chance that anyone is listening—that she will not have to hurt him.

(But she will. She absolutely will, if she must. She has crossed a line, now—what is the point in pretending she is not what she has become? She has taken a life, and no matter how deserved that theft, no matter how _despicable_ the victim, it is a stain she will never wash from her hands. What is more blood, then, if she must spill it to reach Ilya?)

At last, the first guard is past her. _One down._ He calls over his shoulder, “You said these tunnels go all over the palace?”

The second guard—‘Harold,’ Aredhel presumes—climbs into the passage after him. She can tell by the shape of his shadow that he is taller and stockier than the first guard… but not so large, she hopes, that he will not be able to squeeze past her.

“So the Consul says. A lot of the servants confirm that the palace is riddled with them—like cheese—but, funny thing, no one seemed to know about this one.”

From farther down the tunnel, the boy’s thoughtful hum echoes. “Well, I suppose a Count would want his privacy, wouldn’t he?”

Harold harrumphs, close enough now that, if Aredhel wished, she could reach out and touch him. “Fat lot of good his _privacy_ did him in the end.”

Aredhel sucks her weight against the wall—she doesn’t dare breath…

When he comes up in front of her Harold pauses, wheezes, and looks at the passage in front of him with a puzzled expression on his face. He looks far too suspicious… not without good cause. Aredhel is exhausted, spent; perhaps her magic is beginning to shimmer and show. In the dim light of Harold’s torch her eyes scan his body, his armor, looking for—oh, hell, _anything_ —a weak point, some way to get an advantage, to bring him to the ground long enough to leap past him and back into the bedroom—

With a grunt of frustration, Harold hoists up his belt, then presses his gut to the wall opposite Aredhel and shimmies past her. Once he is clear of her, he does not give her so much as a second glance.

The weight of her relief is so great her knees nearly give out beneath her. Her pulse pounds so loudly in ear ears that it drowns out the rest of the guards’ conversation as they meander down the passage, looking for what they will not find—murder weapons or evidence, _ha!_ She’d killed Lucio with her bare hands, and they’d waltzed right past those.

Still, she gives them to the count of sixty, then one hundred, listening to their voices recede into the darkness, following to wherever the passage leads before she leaps away from the wall and back through the portrait, into Lucio’s room. The illusion spell falls away from her, and she’s left staggering under the weight of her exhaustion, gasping for breath.

Lucio’s sedative must have been very strong. A simple glamor should not be this taxing. If she has to cast another, she will not be able to hold it for long.

Cautiously, Aredhel steps towards the door, and peers out into the hall. Save for the half-dozen portraits of the late Count that still line the walls, the hall is empty. But there is no reason to believe it will remain unoccupied for long. The passage behind the portrait may not be as deep as the guard had thought; the pair may have already reached its exit. They could already be on their way back.

Aredhel closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, reaching out… and there, incredibly, at the very ends of what her aura can reach, she feels Asra’s magic.

It is an exquisite kind of ache, to feel him so keenly. It is not really Asra, of course—it is just an impression, left by the puncture he has left in the castle to create his personal doorway, this magic portal ( _to avoid Lucio? …to avoid Ilya?_ )—but the signature of his magic is so familiar to her, so _comforting_ , that for a moment, even though time is so precious, she lets herself linger in the feeling. For three breaths, she allows herself to bask in the warmth of his magic, and from that feeling she draws strength.

Then, brusquely, she hurries to the end of the corridor, towards the door that Asra has built.

 

 

 

Asra’s door is not like the passage Ilya had snuck her into: it opens in one place and closes on another. So it is a bit of a gamble, really, stepping through it; she could end up on the other end of the castle, or the other side of the city, with no space in between for error or caution.

Weak and spent as she is, though, she’s not sure she has a better option.

(And she knows Asra, and trusts him. Trusts that his magic would not call to her so if by following it she would fall into jeopardy.)

‘ _It will leave an irrevocable stain upon your soul,_ ’ she had cautioned Asra; not two days ago, in self defense, he had asked her, ‘ _Would you have let go of me so easily?_ ’

Now Aredhel knows the answer to that question. She knows the lengths to which she would go to keep a loved one safe. How arrogant she had been, to presume to judge Asra for what he had done! In hardly any time at all, she has proven she is just as capable of risking lives—of snuffing them out!—if protecting another requires it.

A shiver of repulsion runs through her. For so long she has resisted the call to violence within her, but now she has answered it; a line has been crossed. And yet as much as she loathes this transformation, she neither rejects it nor fights it: it is done. Freed of her purity (a promise she could never keep) she is prepared to do whatever she must to find Ilya, and repay her debt to him.

But if she’s going to do that, she’s really going to have to eat.

Her hunger is gnawing at her stomach and her magic is a weak and feeble force, the barest trickle where there should be a flood. She has not eaten since her journey into the floating markets, when she had gone shopping for Ilya’s teapot, and that had been… how long ago? A day? _Two_? Her grasp on time is slipping, at least in the standard by which others judge it. Minutes, hours… these words are immaterial to her. The only unit of time that matters is the time between now and Ilya’s execution—for surely now that he has turned himself in and confessed, what remains of Lucio’s court will kill him for it.

Her fingers break through the veil of Asra’s portal; on the other side, it is richly warm with the heat and the light of the summer sun. Wherever the portal leads, it is somewhere beyond the palace walls.

Out-of-doors, will it be easier to hide, or less? Does it matter? Does she have a choice?

(She doesn’t.)

She holds her hand to her chest, and steps through Asra’s portal in one swift stride; like plunging head-first into cold water, momentum is everything.

 

 

 

It has been nearly two days since Aredhel last felt the sun on her skin. She has spent so much of her life taking that feeling for granted; she vows never to do so again. (It is a vow she will almost certainly break, but—standing in the palace gardens, in the center of the hedge maze—the spirit in which the vow is made is earnest.) After being kept so long—drugged in the dark, in that windowless bedroom ( _he was the Count, why on earth did he shut himself away in such a miserable room?_ )—the warmth of the sun on her cheeks is heavenly. Everything around her is verdant and green—gods, she can _smell_ the trees, the powdery sweetness of their pollen on the summer air—

—can smell something else, too, now that it comes to it. At first, she thinks she is imagining it. But in a way, maybe, it makes sense. Judging by the angle of the sun it is early morning yet, not long past dawn. She never attends the annual Masquerade (no matter the promise of revelry, she had found the idea of participating in a celebration meant to honor Count Lucio distasteful) but once, early in their courtship, Asra had convinced her to attend with him. The party had been a remarkable, extravagant affair, and it had sprawled across all the grounds of the palace… including the gardens.

Sure enough, when Aredhel finds her way out of the maze, the party decorations still litter the palace grounds. Beyond the hedges, just beneath the castle veranda, a banquet table is covered with food. Most of it she won’t touch—it’s been out all night, some of it no doubt spoiled—but there’s a fair deal of fruit, and some half-stale bread. She tucks as much as she can into the pockets of her dress (cursing, wishing she’d had the good sense to take her bag out of Lucio’s bedroom before she’d left it) before retreating to the hedge maze, and out of sight.

At least here, she thinks, she won’t be disturbed. Who would be walking the labyrinth at a time like this? The whole palace is in shock, if not mourning. The maze is good place to cross her legs beneath her, spread her bounty on the ground in front of her, and figure out a plan.

First things first: she will have to break Ilya out of the dungeons. ‘ _Again_ ,’ she thinks with a grimace, furrowing her brow. And this time, he’ll be coming with her, whether he wants to or not. If he had only come with her the first time—

(But he hadn’t. And why was that, again? So desperate to find a cure, and she had believed in him. Strange, now, how that knowledge feels inside of her; weighty. How he had begged her:  ‘ _Please. I need to do this._ ’ Should she respect that compulsion—that _devotion_ —more or less, now, in light of all his sins?)

—but he had not. So she will go to him again, and steal him away, dragging him over her shoulder if necessary. And then…?

Aredhel sighs, munching on a crust of bread. Well, then, she supposes they'll have to run off together after all, just like they'd planned. The city would no longer be safe for either of them.

(The small thrill that runs through her at the thought [ _lay me down in golden fields and love me like you promised, and I will beat back whoever pursues us, I will keep you so protected and safe_ ] but it comforts her only a moment before she guilt and self-loathing rush in to displace it. ‘ _I wonder how he might have treated you._ ’ No better, probably, than he had ‘treated’ others. He has participated in an atrocity; she still does not know if she can forgive him for it, even if that does make her a hypocrite, considering her own crimes. Perhaps he [like her] had felt, under the circumstances, a similar sense of desperation—that his options had been limited, that he had little choice. Still, how many had he hurt-slain- _used_? Those wretched sick who had not been shepherded tenderly into their afterlife as all good souls should be, but wrenched in screaming agony into blackness; _how many eyes closed for the last time on his face—his mask?_ It is despicable, horrible, and the thought tears her to pieces… so _why_ , then, does she still feel this commanding need to protect him?

She is… so _furious_ with him, for keeping this from her. The anger is so loud and hot that she cannot even begin to untangle the deeper feelings of betrayal beyond the thorn of his complicity. It is a lucky thing, she thinks, that her rage drowns out those other questions, at least for now.)

“How is she? Does she yet live?”

Aredhel stiffens; she had been so lost in her own thoughts she had not even heard the servants approach. Quietly, she sets down her bread and turns, peering through the hedges to make out their forms on the lawn.

“She lives, but barely,” the second servant replies. “The Countess is clinging to life by a thread.”

So the Countess has been attacked, as well, just as Lucio had threatened. That can only bring more trouble, if not one but two murders have been attempted on the County. It has been many years since a political attack of such magnitude was carried out in this part of the world; it will require a small miracle, to secret Ilya out of the castle under those circumstances.

“Have they figured out whether the Doctor was responsible for her poisoning as well?”

“It isn’t terribly clear. But the Satrinava family has been informed, and the rumor is that they are sending a Truthsayer. Doctor Devorak’s story changes every time they ask him to recount it—Consul Valeriusthinks he is covering up for an accomplice. That’s the only reason he hasn’t been executed already.”

…Aredhel’s heart freezes over; her thoughts race like an avalanche down a mountainside.

A Truthsayer will know straight away that Ilya is lying—they will look into his memory and see _her_ , hunched by the bed, still bleeding from the neck. It will not matter then, of course, that he is guiltless. They will hang Ilya anyway for his deception, an _accessory_ to her own crime. If he is sat before a Truthsayer, there will be no protecting him.

But Prakra is far away, across the sea, so unless there is a Truthsayer conducting investigation in one of the nearer city-states, she will not have to worry about their arrival for days—weeks, more likely. No, what matters more is that they do not believe him in the first place, for which she blames neither Ilya nor his interrogators (a thought that frightens her and grieves her more than it should [why does she still care for him, his hurt her own?] _have they tortured him, tried to beat the truth out of him_?) because after all the the fire that consumed the Count was so plainly _arcane_ , as would have been abundantly clear even after it had burned down to nothing. And if this is true—if they suspect him of having a partner—will he not be doubly (triply) guarded? A trap waiting to snatch her in its jaws. She will walk straight into it, but not without a plan: an escape plotted, a swift exit waiting.

Aredhel sets her jaw.

Somewhere around here, there must be a stable.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It’s kind of funny, isn’t it—given the time he’s spent among pirates, and his romanticism, and his proclivity for pain—Ilya has never had a tattoo before.

Because that’s what it is. They call it a ‘ _murderer’s brand_ ,’ but what that really means is ink-soaked needles, piercing the skin of his hand. The pain of it is sweet—it is deserved. He understands, he thinks, why part of the brand takes the shape of a heart, and the line they draw up from its folds is like the arrow that ran him through. He _loves_ her.

But what a terrible job he’s done—how well he’s proven he doesn’t deserve it. Does not deserve _her_. He has gotten Aredhel in trouble, again and again—his mind still runs wild, a frothy and churning sea. ‘ _What did he do to her?_ ’ seeing red, and ‘Red, and a fearsome rage. He wants to wrap his hands around Lucio’s throat and squeeze—only now, he will never get the chance.

‘ _What did he do to her?_ ’ The thought makes him rage and despair, and burdens him with a terrible guilt, for whatever Lucio has done to Aredhel, it is Ilya who has allowed it to come to pass.

She would never have come here, if it were not for him.

But Ilya is sure, then—despite the pain in his hand, his skin ink-stained with this reminder of his devotion, his commitment to protect her ( _oh well, either way, probably won’t really have to look at it for much longer_ ) and the walls that keep him trapped in the bowels of the palace dungeons—that he has made the right choice.

It was him. He got Aredhel into this mess. ( _It is his fault_.)

He is steeled, all unshakeable resolve, a pillar of stone; he will not let her suffer because of him. Not again.

He shudders to think what would have happened had—had _someone_ (who?) not let him out of his cell, had he not gotten to Lucio’s wing just in time.

 

 

 

All along that hurried way he'd carried a stone in his gut, a scarred pit of dread, ‘ _where has he taken her?_ ’ and Valdemar’s words and their grin when they had said, ‘ _I cannot say for certain what the Count may have done—it was he, not I, who was interested in the witch._ ’ When Ilya saw the smoke billowing out of Lucio’s room that same sinking fear had both hardened and bloated— _my fault she is here, she would not have come, she followed me—_ pressing out, filling so much of him it made it hard to breathe. But when he had leapt through the door, and taken in the scene—Aredhel on the floor, bleeding slightly from the neck but otherwise (as best as he could tell) physically unharmed—Lucio on the bed, burning with a flame that must be magical, for it singes neither sheet nor post near his corpse—Aredhel, protected, by her own fierce hand—the hurt Lucio had inflicted (if he had, though _surely_ he had) already ended—all of Ilya’s anxieties had quieted, and all of him quivering with one bright, relieved thought:

_That’s my girl._

It had only lasted one moment, but the pride and love that filled him had been enough to fuel him into action when the screaming chorus resumed with a vengeance: _My fault, my fault, my fault_. If Aredhel had to defend herself in this way Lucio must have really tried to hurt her. Maybe he already had, in ways that wouldn't be immediately apparent, before she— _No_.

No time to think of that now, not when so much was at stake.

The guilt— _my fault, my fault_ —would have been crippling, were it not drowned out by the roar inside of him demanding he protect her, now.

In two strides he was at her side. Knelt on Lucio’s carpet, Aredhel had looked as she has never looked: _frightened_. Even on the edge of death, there had been not a trace of fear on her face. He had ached, to see her so frightened; that hurt had not lessened until he had dropped to her side and drawn her close to him, trying to soothe her, “Aredhel, I have you, I am here, it’s alright.”

And then she had—she had _flinched_ from him.

Even her eventual surrender (not willing, he thought; more a crumbling, a collapse) when she folded herself against him was not enough to dull the agony he had felt, so sudden and wretched that for a minute he’d forgotten to breathe:

_She knows._

 

 

 

‘ _What did he do to her?_ ’ he had thought, panicked as he fled through the halls. ‘ _Maybe he hurt her in ways that would not be immediately apparent_.’ Wrong again, Ilya! She _is_ hurt, as much as she is in danger, but this is a hurt that you have caused her yourself.

Asra had not told Aredhel about Quaestor Valdemar, the experiments, the dungeons (clinging, perhaps, to some notions of nobility and morality, or some fathomless well of forgiveness) but Lucio had always loved to get under people’s skin, to wound them on words if he was too weak (or too lazy) to harm them bodily. And Lucio would have shared none of Asra’s reservations—he would not have hesitated to use that knowledge to break her.

 

 

This is how Ilya is to be punished for daring to think he could have a life with her, that he was good enough to deserve it; Aredhel, in danger, _again_. In peril because she loves him—or, _loved_ him, maybe. But the tense of that particular verb (whether or not it runs right through him and leaves an ache like a gaping hole in his chest) _does not matter_. Lucio had caught her because she had come to see him—because he had been too weak to turn her away from the start. Because he had not been honest with her when he should have been.

...the courtiers were still just outside the door. At any moment, they could come barging in and find them. And when they realize what Aredhel has done, they will hang her for it.

Ilya would not— _could not_ —allow that to happen.

They could not return to the hall; that was the surest way to be caught. But Ilya had been treating Lucio for a long time—too long—long enough to have occupied the bedroom at times when he had been unwelcome, to see things he should not have seen. And yet, _thanks and praise_ for his blundering, for catching Valerius sneaking in to do gods-know- _what_ with the late Count, for it had given him this gift, this knowledge: a way, perhaps, to get her out.

Of course, ‘out’ is not the same thing as ‘safe,’ and he had no idea where the passage led. But if he could provide a big enough distraction—and he’s been told, on more than one occasion, that he has a tendency towards the dramatic, so that really shouldn’t be a problem—it won’t really matter, where she ends up.

They would no longer be looking for her, if they thought the killer had been caught.

“Red, come on,” he had said, as gently as he could (and did she cower, _shrink_ , from the sound of her name on his lips? Love, _loved_ —his fault, [blame in the infinitive] _doesn’t matter_ ) and when she did not move he had wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off the ground, guiding her forward. “Quick now, into the corner…”

Aredhel went where he led; she had not resisted when he herded her into the corner of the bedroom, passing anxious glances over his shoulder all the way. When he stood at last before Lucio’s painting… he had been, for a heartbeat, at a loss. He had only seen the passage open from the inside, but it _should_ be able to open both ways—his hands had fumbled around the frame’s edge, searching for something, anything, “Somewhere around here there has to be— _aha._ ”

His fingers found the button on the bottom edge of the frame. _Of course_. He should have known to begin his search here; leave it to Lucio to hide the catch in such a way that anyone seeking entrance in the passage beyond had to literally bow to his portrait to do so.

The frame swung free of the wall with a click; beyond it was a passage, full of cool and untainted air.

“Come on, Aredhel,”  he’d said, lifting her over the lip and setting her down safely in the tunnel beyond. It was suggestion enough in her current state to leave her stepping, curiously, into the darkness, running her hands over the roughly hewn stone of the passage walls.

And he had known, then, that he should go—he should _really_ go, close canvas over her before anyone sees—but he had known, as he had watched her (wandering, without him, into the dark) that this might very well be the last time he ever saw her, given what was coming to him.

(That fate he will accept without fight. He will gladly go to such lengths to protect her, as he should have from the start.)

But his name on her lips—uncertain, and a little bit fearful—”Ilya?” nearly undid all of his resolve. Pillars of stone, he was, _unshakeable_ ; but the sound of her voice was enough to make all that cold stone tremble.

_No, no, I cannot, it is my fault—_

“Are you not coming with me?”

What was he supposed to say to that? He would have mistaken it for a question but for the note of desperation in her voice; it was not an inquiry, but a plea.

But his mind had been made up: he had decided to gamble his life for hers a second time, double or nothing. Once already he had risked his life for her, and that had not turned out so bad, in the end. Perhaps, Ilya had thought, wryly, his luck would hold.

The look on his face as he thought on these things must have been confirmation enough of her fears, because she had reached for him, wrapped her hand ( _how she shook!_ ) around his wrist, “No, Ilya, please, don’t leave me—”

“I love you,” he had said—what else is there to tell her? She knows, she has flinched from him, (love, _loved_ ) and it does not matter one lick, changes nothing. “It'll be alright. I will make it alright—I will protect you, I promise. Please, I love you—go.”

“You only say that when you're about to do something foolish.”

Her accusation tore him in two, though he knew it to be false. If it were true—if he really had a tendency to declare his love for her when he was on the verge of some fresh foolishness—he would have been saying it all along, far more frequently, ‘ _I love you, I love you_.’ Everything they have had has been built upon falsehoods and foolishness. Thinking he could protect her, _lying_ to her, imagining a life they might have shared—the very epitome of foolish.

He had passed one last glance over his shoulder towards the door—the room still unoccupied, the doorway clouded with smoke—before he had pulled her into his arms.

It was a kindness he did not deserve, that she did not flinch from him, then. Love, loved—perhaps she was only frightened, and had returned his kiss with fervent desperation (meeting his hunger and exceeding it) because she had been attempting to break his resolve, to convince him not to leave her alone. But he had been foolish—and nothing but foolish—for far too long.

“I promise,” Ilya swore—a solemn oath—brushing his lips against hers, “this is the least foolish thing I’ve ever done.”

Then he had pushed her as gently as he dared (he had not wanted her to trip backwards, but neither could he risk slamming her arms in the door if she had reached for him again) before sealing the portrait shut. Faintly below the sounds of Lucio’s body going to ash two feet away he could hear her screaming after him, cursing him, fear twisted into fury… and she’s smart, even ( _especially_ ) when she’s mad, and he could not risk her coming after him. _If she figures out how to reopen the portrait from the opposite side_ —and then Ilya’s eyes had fallen on Lucio’s massive nightstand, and without another thought he had seized it, dragging it the few extra inches across the carpet until it overlapped with the painting’s frame, too large a weight for her to force past.

And the bedroom was yet empty.

 

 

 

He had passed a sidelong glance at what was left of Lucio, still smoldering on the bed.

Bitterly, he spat, “Bit off a bit more than you could chew this time, didn’t you?”

Then he had rounded the bed, leaving Lucio behind him… taking the last few steps towards the door. Every swing of his pendulum legs slows his heartbeat, and clears his head. He will do the right thing—this one _good_ thing (good as she mistakenly believed him to be; in the end, he will reward her faith in him) even if it is the last thing he does.

As he walks back through the doorway, he raises his arms over his head in surrender—and the smile he wears ( _she is safe, will be safe_ ) befitting the role he must play, the crooked assassin proud of his handiwork, the blood (the ash) on his hands.

“ _Count Lucio is dead—I, Julian Devorak, have come to surrender for the crime of his murder!_ ”

 

 

 

The palace guards had been upon him at once. He had been shoved to the floor, clapped in irons, led to the cell in which he still sits. But though his confession had been convincing enough to lock him up, not everyone believed he had committed the crime.

“Who are you covering for, Doctor No.069?”

When Ilya had heard the click of the lock to his cell, his stomach had dropped, thinking it would be Aredhel, breaking in again, looking to save him—it was the only time he has ever sighed in relief at the sight of Quaestor Valdemar.

“I’m not covering for anyone,” he’d grinned, all bravado, with a playful shrug of his shoulders. It jostled the chains that shackled him to the wall, sending all that metal clinking as the Quaestor stared at him through the barred window of the cell door. “I loathed the Count. If I regret anything, it’s not killing him sooner.”

But he had worked too closely with Valdemar. The Quaestor had only grinned ear to ear, steepling their fingers.

“You couldn’t even cut into a dead body, No.069, no matter how I pushed, or threatened. You always preferred to stand an arm’s length away and scribble in your little notebook. We both know you don’t have it in you to take a life, even if it is required.” The Quaestor had grinned, wide and menacing enough to bear all their sharply pointed teeth. “So who is it, then, that you are helping?”

“I set him on fire,” Ilya replied, with what he hoped was a convincingly indifferent shrug. “Hang me for it if you want, but that’s the only answer you’ll get out of me.”

The Quaestor tittered in amusement. “Oh, no, you misunderstand, Doctor. Did you think we would execute you when there may be someone else yet free who has attacked the House of this City? Who has felled, among all of us Lucio himself? Would that person if they existed not also be a threat to myself and the courtiers? No,” they say, shaking their head, “No, we will have our answers, sooner or later.”

It will be _later,_ if at all: Ilya is tight-lipped through the torture they subject him to, giddy at the pain. For pain, after all, is a far easier burden to bear than guilt or regret.

They can beat him to a pulp, pull back his nails, but he will not, will never, give her up.

(And as long as they are torturing him—as long as they are still trying to steal their answers out of him—it means they have not found Aredhel. With every hour that passes, it seems more and more likely she has escaped. No matter what hurt they wish to inflict on him, that thought keeps him calm and peaceful.)

 

 

Ilya had not been mistaken when he had turned his head to the door, expecting Aredhel and finding the Quaestor instead. He had merely expected her arrival too early.

At the sound of the lock of his cell door turning he expects more torture—Ilya is ready for it. Though he is already bloodied and battered and bruised there is a part of him that welcomes such pain. (It is his fault; he deserves it.) But when the door swings open swiftly and quietly, only long enough to let Aredhel slip inside and shut the door behind her, the gasp Ilya makes is wrenched from the depths of his soul—a sound laden with more pain than any he had made while the Quaestor’s servants had tried to beat the truth out of him.

“ _Aredhel_.” Her name on his lips is a frantic, frightened hiss; he lunges away from the wall, only to be yanked back when the slack in his shackles runs short. “Aredhel, what are you _doing_ here, you need to leave, get out of the city—!”

And gods… Aredhel cannot even look at him. Her gaze holds to the floor as she crosses the space to his side, taking one of his shackles and wrapping her hands around it. “Where have I heard that before?” she murmurs, with a wry smile. It is so hollow, so empty—it does not suit her in the least. 

The shackle springs free with a click; she passes a cautious glance over her shoulder at the door, then moves to the other, passing him a sidelong glance before she focuses her attention on his wrist.

“We are murderers both, now,” Aredhel says, quietly. “We’d best look out for one another.”

He is not sure how long he will be able to stand it, bearing the burden of grief and panic that descends on him to see here here, again… to hear the truth and the bitter resignation in her voice when she names them both for what they are.

_Murderers._

It is a greater agony than any torture he has thus withstood, to see her before him and to hear her name herself thusly. But Aredhel had killed a tyrant in self-defense, her actions doubly justified because she had had no choice but to protect herself, and because the Count was no doubt deserving of such an end anyway. Ilya had participated in something much worse: deaths more frequent and numerous, and the now-dead, defenseless; they had been, in a sense, _in his care._ And all this violence and bloodshed half-justified with lies of a ‘greater good,’ best intentions. But nothing can undo such suffering; there is no way, really, to defend his actions.

He knows her, he loves her—their crimes are nothing alike.

“Aredhel, no,” Ilya says, as sternly as he can, but in his panic the words come fast and hurried and far from convincing. “I can’t—I cannot—unshackle me if you want, let me loose, but please, _please,_ ” and he reaches for her, cups her hands in his. “You have to go. Please, go—I want you to go.”

Aredhel’s jaw sets, and she raises her eyes to his, determined. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“You have to,” he says, shaking his head. “Aredhel, if they see me with you, none of this will matter. The courtiers, Quaestor Valdemar—they don’t think I did it. They have been looking all over for a weapon, or an accomplice—”

She huffs, a bitter, frustrated sound, pulling her hands out of his so she can run her fingertips over the raw wound of his ink-brand. He is quieted by the gentleness of her touch.

“They were certain enough to give you _that_.”

Her touch does not linger. She inhales sharply and pulls her hands away, peering through the bars of the door and into the hall.

“You said they have been looking for your accomplice,” she says, matter-of-factly. “They haven’t found me yet. And they won’t—not if you get up and follow me, now.” She studies his face (and, as though seeing already his resistance foretold in his features) adds, for good measure, “I will stay here until you leave with me, or until I am found. I am not leaving without you this time.”

(He has only turned himself in to protect her; every moment he lingers in indecision, he puts her in danger. She knows this. He has no choice, then, but to go: to follow where she leads.)

The corridors of the dungeon are lined with the crumpled bodies of guards, hunched over the weapons and shields that provided them little protection from Aredhel. “They are not dead,” she tells Ilya, without being asked. “But I do not know how long it will be before they wake. We have to hurry.”

 

 

Aredhel can hardly look at him. But as she leads him through the castle, she holds his hand in hers, dragging him behind her. Her grip is iron-tight, surer than the shackles that kept him leashed to the wall. Every so often, as she guides him around corners, through magical portals that cut impossible distances through space, she passes a glance at him over her shoulder, as if to reassure herself (though their clasped hands should be reassurance enough) that he is still behind her still, following her out.

She should not be here, she should not be sticking her neck out for him again—once more she has put herself in danger for his sake, and Ilya’s guilt twists at him. But worse than that is the selfish thrill that runs through him just to see her: the pale gold of her hair in the castle’s torchlight, the determination in her eyes. In Lucio’s bedroom, at the passage behind the portrait, he had thought that would be the last he would see of her—he has been given one more chance to look upon her. He should be vigilant, he knows. This is no time for carelessness. Still he cannot help but drink in the sight of her, and relish the feeling of her hand wrapped around his, holding him tightly.

‘ _Remember this_ ,’ he thinks, trying to commit the feeling of her fingertips to memory. She can hardly look at him; Ilya doubts she will hold him longer than necessary.

He does not take the fact that she has come to rescue him as a sign that she loves him, still. He hopes, in his heart, it is not; as much as it would pain him, he hopes she has given up on him. ‘ _Let me go,’_ he prays, _‘let me do this one good thing._ ’ Whatever moves her—love, shame, regret—he hopes that, when the time comes, she will relinquish it. It is all his fault, his burden to bear; he does not want her to walk down this path by his side. 

Deplorable as it is, even as she leads him out of the palace—into the hedge maze in the gardens, and then through it, smuggling him through the grounds to the lemonstone wall, and then down the hillside, through the thick golden grass to the aqueduct—he is thinking of how to escape her. How to convince her to let him go.

 

 

A horse of noble stock is tied in the shadows beneath the aqueduct’s arches. By the look of it alone—regal white haunches, handsome face—it appears to be one of Lucio’s. The ornate decoration on the horse’s tack (inexpertly saddled, Ilya notes) confirms his suspicions that the beast has come from the palace stables.

There is little time to spare—he sets, at once, to readjusting the saddle, tightening the belt that runs around the horse’s girth.

“I don’t know how to ride,” Aredhel admits sheepishly. “I wasn’t sure how to dress the horse… you’ll have to guide it, when we get going, and I’ll hold onto you in back.”

When ‘ _we_ ’ get going—she does not yet know that she is going nowhere. At least, not with him. Ilya has not yet had the strength to tell her, but he has thought on this all down the hillside and now he is sure of it. He cannot allow Aredhel to come with him, to follow him down this dark road, to live the rest of her life as a fugitive. It is not that he believes she is not cut out for it. Probably they could run, and run, and never look back… admittedly, he’d be safer in her company. But that is not a life he wants for her: always looking over her shoulder, fleeing from place to place, forsaking the comforts of a life she deserves. There is no reason for her to follow him but for his own sake, and now (what with how she is looking at him, or more aptly, how she can’t) he thinks if she did follow him it would be out of obligation. He will not hold her to it.

It is time to tell her.

In awkward silence in which there is only the wind rustling the grass, the hum of water rushing along the track of the aqueduct over head, and the clicking of the saddle’s buckles as he tightens the gird, Ilya steels his resolve.

“Aredhel, you broke me out—and I—I appreciate that, believe me—but I’m not taking you with me.”

Her response is immediate, apprehensive: “What are you talking about?”

The muscles of Ilya’s shoulders clench; he can hear the rebellion on the edges of her voice like the darkening clouds of an oncoming storm. He does not want to fight her, but he will if he must. For now, he keeps his eyes set on the saddle, occupying his fingers with frivolous things: lengthening the stirrup, brushing off the seat. “I don’t want you to come with me,” he says. “You’ll only be putting yourself in more danger, and I… I won’t have it.”

This time, when she replies, the apprehension has left her voice: there is only bitterness. Her voice cuts:

“If you insist on ripping out my heart, Ilya—if you are going to abandon me a second time—at least do me the decency of looking me in the eye while you do it.”

Ilya swallows; she is right. He is a coward, but she deserves better, and isn’t the whole point of this—confessing to her crimes, letting her live freely—that he wants to be good, be better for her?

He turns from the horse. Aredhel wears an ugly grimace, her arms crossed over her chest. She looks distraught and defiant, as betrayed as she is obstinate, but when he approaches, closing the space between her, her expression softens.

“I may not escape the guards,” he tells her, voice low. “For all I know they may have me back in their custody before I reach the city limits, and even once I leave Vesuvius I am sure they will not stop hunting for me. That is not a path I would have you follow me down.” Gently—he is not sure he will be able to endure it if she flinches from him again—he raises his hand to her face, softens his refusal with a caress to her cheek. “There’s no reason for you to get dragged down with me.”

She raises her hand to cover his; her features twist in frustration, and she presses her face into his touch. “But it was not you who killed Lucio, you didn’t do _anything_ —”

“Aredhel,” Ilya says, and his voice is soft and forlorn, but it carries a note of chastisement. “You know that’s not true now, don’t you?”

The way she looks at him—or more accurately, the way she can’t—is all the answer he needs. “Of course you do,” he answers for himself, quietly. “You can barely look at me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Aredhel asserts, shaking her head, forcing herself to look into his face. “We’re stuck together now, both our hands bloody. And whatever you did, or didn’t do, we’ll have plenty of time to unpack that once we get out of here.”

“No, Aredhel, you have to stay.” He pulls his hand away from her face and gathers both her hands in his, holding them tight, beseeching. “You have to get my cure to the Countess—”

“Your cure?”

“For the plague.”

Wonder displaces the confusion on her face. The ghost of her old smile curves her mouth, and she slips her hands out of his to brush her thumb over his cheek. Awe makes her voice small and quiet. “You did it,” she says. “You really did it.” 

And for a heartbeat it is almost as it always was: she is bright and so proud of him, regarding him with the same admiration and affection that she used to. But then her face twists in pain, and she covers her mouth with her hand, choking back a sob, the memory of the promises they had made in the dungeon in the dark too bittersweet to bear.

She is strong, though; far stronger than Ilya himself. There are bigger things in the world than this parting between them. “Please, Aredhel,” he says, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “It’s down in the dungeon, in the first cell they kept me in, with the desk—you have to get it to the Countess.”

“I can’t,” she manages, her voice pitched and grieved.

“Why not?”

Aredhel sniffs, takes a few shaking breaths to calm herself, runs her fingers through her hair. “Something… happened, I’m not sure what. The servants are saying the Countess is unconscious; the doctors don’t think she’ll last the night.” 

Then a spark of an idea seizes her, and she shakes her head, forces a grin. “So there is nothing, really, to keep me here. No one else of trustworthy authority to give it to. Come with me, come away with me, let the city burn behind us. Let them look for us. They won’t find us—”

“No. Aredhel, _no_ —”

“Ilya, listen to me,” she says, seriously, gathering his hands up in hers and bringing them to her chest, holding them over her heart. “I can’t stay here. There are guards who know I was taken to Lucio’s room—not many, but enough for me to be a suspect, if they think you did not act alone.”

“But they can’t prove anything,” Ilya replies, with a proud smile. “You’re smarter than them. You’ll outwit them.”

“I cannot outwit a _Truthsayer_ , Ilya.”

Ilya’s pleased smile freezes on his face, all of him shocked stock-still with the horror that seizes him then. Quaestor Valdemar had said nothing about a Truthsayer. 

“A—a what?” he manages. 

“A Truthsayer,” Aredhel repeats, squeezing his hands. “House Satrinava in Prakra has been informed of the attack on the Countess, and the Count’s death. They are sending a Truthsayer to get to the bottom of it.”

Ilya wrenches his hands out of Aredhel’s grasp, covering his face (twisted with panic) as he stumbles backwards. There are very few verified Truthsayers in the world—well traveled as he is, Ilya has only heard rumors himself—but an assassination like this is the very reason they existed. If they put him in a room with a Truthsayer it would not matter that they could beat him, bloody him, have him writhing in pain without him giving her up—with no more than a look, a Truthsayer would know he had not murdered the Count. More than that, if the Truthsayer was half as good as they were said to be, they’d be able to see in his memory of rushing into Lucio’s burning bedroom; they’d know exactly who he was covering for. “Aredhel, that’s even _worse_!”

Ilya’s hands tug at his hair. It is all… so much, _too much_ ; he plants a hand against the pillar of the aqueduct to steady himself so that he does not fall over under the weight of it. This is all his fault—he had been too terrible a liar, she had _asked_ him to go with her—had he followed her into the portrait, perhaps, they could have escaped.

_If they find me—if they hand me over to a Truthsayer—they will hang her. She will be dead and it will be no one’s fault but my own, and this time, there will be no spell or ritual that will save her. I will lose her—!_

‘ _You have work to do_ ,’ she had told him, in the dungeon, pressing a kiss to his face at their sweetest parting, ‘ _and when it is done there will be nothing left to come between us._ ’ But he has done his work and it matters not—and the space between them has widened to a chasm, cracked wide by his own lies, his own carelessness, selfishness— _wait._

“Aredhel,” he says, quietly, thinking back on that night, on all his myriad refusals and the many reassurances she had given him before he had taken her into his arms. “Do you remember the first time you visited me in my cell? You said you could... take the memories of the guards, if they saw you.”

There’s a pause before Aredhel responds; he cannot tell if it is because Aredhel is uncertain of the answer, or apprehensive about the question that prompted it. “I may have oversimplified but yes, I can do something like that. Why… why are you asking me that?”

Ilya straightens, pulls his hands from his face and swallows. He is brave enough, this time, to meet her gaze.

“You have to take them from me,” he says, voice low. “My memories—everything, _anything_ that ties me to you. If I get caught—”

“No.” Her refusal is immediate; she shakes her head emphatically. “Ilya, you do not understand what you are asking of me.”

Ilya nods, closing the distance between them. “I do. And trust me, Aredhel, I understand your reservations; I’m loathe to lose those memories myself. They are…” and here he must pause, bite his lip, _collect_ himself (he knows the loss he will suffer; he knows he deserves it, knows it is worth it) “… _very_ precious to me. But I’m a wretch of a man, Aredhel, and you know, now, what I’ve done… what I tried to keep from you.”

Once more he reaches out to touch her, though he hardly dares any contact bolder than the barest brush of her knuckles against her jaw. She is so good, so utterly undeserving of the punishment that will befall her if she is caught. He cannot allow that to come to pass. And now that the idea has seized him, he will not let go of it. 

In the dungeon, she had the upper hand. But now, she wants him to leave—to go, to flee, before he his caught. The power to be stubborn is his.

“I want you to be safe. The price is steep, but it’s one I’m more than willing to pay.” Aredhel squeezes her eyes shut. She tries to turn away from him, but he catches her chin in his fingers and guides her to face him.

“Please, Aredhel, let me give you this… they may have already noticed I’m gone.”

“Absolutely not,” she seethes, a smoldering fury in her eyes. “Do you expect me to stay here, pretend nothing has happened, cross my fingers they will not find me out? I will be in just as much danger—”

“Maybe you will stay,” Ilya tells her, abruptly. “Maybe you’ll go. But if you do, you won’t be going with me.”

Again, Aredhel can hardly meet his eyes but this, he thinks, is a different kind of reluctance. Even as she avoids his gaze her hand covers his and draws it to her cheek; Ilya raises his other hand to frame her face, holding it gently between his hands. “There has to be another way,” she breathes into the scant space between them. “We can run away together, find asylum in another country—Lucio had plenty of enemies would would welcome us as heroes—”

“And become political pawns, to be traded for favor when it suits the whim of whatever monarch takes us in? No.” Ilya shakes his head, his eyes downcast. “If you go with me, Aredhel, you will be in jeopardy every moment. At least if I go on my own, lead them on a chase out of the city, that will give you time to—to do _something_ , to protect yourself—”

“What is the _point_ of protecting myself, if it means I am without you?” 

(In the passage, when she had turned to face him, to kiss him, he had been able to excuse it as a ploy; _she loves me, she loved me, she doesn’t anymore._ But when she speaks now the grief in her voice rings true, all shattered glass and broken promises. Her green eyes have gone glassy with tears—and isn’t that something? Even when she had been sick with the plague, in the throes of agony her sickness had pitched her into, he had never seen her cry.)

“You told me…” she says, her voice cracking, “you told me you would go with me anywhere, follow me anywhere.”

That nearly breaks him. He cannot believe she still wants to go with him; this miracle is almost enough to justify breaking rank, scrambling his plans, promises. How he still wants it! To be beside her through frigid straits and tropical valleys, to remain with her always. But he is unworthy of such a gift, and such a life is closed to them, anyway. They could not tarry, could not travel, not with this sword hanging over their heads. They would always be looking over their shoulder, expecting pursuit.

No, he is unshakeable as stone: he must be strong.

“That doesn’t matter now,” Ilya says, releasing her face and pulling away from her; he can no longer bear such intimate proximity. “It’s too late.” He smiles at her ruefully. “I should have gone with you while I still had the chance….”

Her reply, weak, a quaver in her voice: “We still have a chance.”

“We don’t.”

It is so difficult, pushing her away. But it is only as difficult as it is necessary, and though he does not wish to hurt her (to add another sin to the list of wrongs he has committed against her) he will be tougher if he has to:

“What I learned from Asra and what Asra learned from you is that there is only pain in chasing something that doesn’t want you to follow,” Ilya says, taking a deep breath. “It’s your turn, Aredhel. I don’t want you coming with me. Our chance has passed us, now.”

Aredhel looks at him as though he has struck her; he has never seen her look so small. Betrayal, grief, and denial flash across her face, before she worries her bottom lip between her teeth and shakes her head. 

“But Ilya… I love you.” 

[ _At the end, now, that much is painfully clear._ ]

When he does not respond in kind, the shaking of her head becomes more pronounced. She screws her eyes shut, brings her hands to her mouth to muffle a sob. “Please,” she weeps, “please, do not ask me to do this.”

“If you don't do it, then I’ll leave, and find Asra. We both know he won’t hesitate,” Ilya replies, with a small smile that fails to cheer her. (How badly he wants to reach for her! To hold her close, to soothe her. But he cannot—how can he possibly get her to agree to let him go, if he is yet clinging to her?) “If I have to find him, though, I’ll have to stay in the city, and it’s more likely I’ll be caught, and….”

Ilya bites his lip, swallows thickly.

(He will allow himself this one indulgence.)

“I’d rather it was you,” he says, quietly, fingers itching for her, wishing to touch her. “If I’m going to forget, I want to say goodbye to you.”

Still, she looks at him, full of hesitation and uncertainty; her lips part to give voice to some fresh line of protest, but their attention is drawn back to the palace and its high lemonstone walls when forth from its turrets comes the shrill blare of a hunting horn.

Ilya’s heart leaps into his throat—the alarm can only mean one thing. “They’ve let out the dogs.” They have noticed he is gone, they are looking for him at this very moment. And the longer he wastes trying to convince her, the greater danger she is in. “Quick, Aredhel—do it now.”

“Ilya... I can't, I can't, please....”

“You have to. Be strong, Aredhel—we don’t have much time.”

Aredhel is silent. Her obstinance is written all over her face; her hands have lowered from her mouth and folded over her heart. A sharp sound—the distant bark of a borzoi?—draws her gaze away from him only momentarily… one last time her face twists in grief before it sets into a look of determination.

She is upon him before he has time to react, her hands wrapped around the back of his neck, her thumbs smoothing the hair of his sideburns as she pulls his mouth towards hers. 

It is a torrid and voracious kiss; Ilya thinks for a moment her tears have wet his cheeks before he realizes that he, too, is weeping, gasping in this space between them. His arms wrap around her and pull her close, hands grasping for a hold that might keep her, save them from this parting. Soon they are both shaking badly enough that they can no longer meet each other’s mouths, simply cradling their heads together, foreheads kissed.

Aredhel pulls away without warning. She has never looked as fierce as she does now: pale hair flying about her face, eyes red not from sickness but from tears, an the ugly grimace on her face. She leans in close to him, hands tugging lightly at his hair, and whispers: 

“I will find you. In another life, as surely as the rivers finds the sea, I will find you. And when I do, I will not let you go.”

Then she plants her thumb in the center of his brow, and the world goes out from under him.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ilya had said it so simply—‘ _you have to take them from me’_ —but pulling his memories out of his head is anything but simple. It’s complicated, delicate spellwork; it’s _agony._

Pulling those memories out of his head is like pulling a single thread in a tapestry and praying the whole thing won’t unravel. And how often she has been in his thoughts! She can see it now, while plucking them out—the vastness of the space he had carved for her in his heart, the reverence with which he had loved her. She can measure how dear she was to him by the hole that she leaves behind when she pulls each trace of her out of him, a terribly empty hollow where there had once been such color and richness and light.

Not once does she escape her anguish, nor the horror of what she is doing to the man that she loves. Not for a minute does she forget that by doing as he has asked (by pulling so much out of him) she is inflicting, in a way, a trauma. She is shattering him—there is a chance he will never again be whole.

 _Oh,_ but how she loves him….

…she is here, anyway, with his past opened up to her. He is risking his life for her, again. Against all reason and logic, despite everything he has done and everything she has learned, she loves him more dearly than she has ever loved another—on this occasion of their parting, she will give him one last gift.

His mind is empty of all memory of her, but she does not stop there: when she has finished erasing all trace of her from him, she then reaches for something else.

_Vaulted ceilings, putrid air—blood in the floor drains—wrought-iron lift, a red gem set in a large key—scalpels and screaming. The panicked pleas of men being led to the slaughter._

These, too, she takes: all traces of the laboratory and the things he had done there. She wipes clean all recollection of his office (she can see it now, wretched little thing, barred from the outside) and the tables, the vivisections, the red beetles picking the bones of the dead clean in the well by the wall. Gone are his memories of Quaestor Valdemar, and the months of insult and abuse he suffered under Valdemar and Lucio both. Ilya will remember none of it.

 _‘You are free of these things,’_ she thinks, as she completes the spell. _‘In your next years be as good as I know you can be—help as many as you can to earn it.’_

Then he collapses in her arms; Aredhel sinks to her knees to catch him. She gathers his limp body into her lap, wraps her arm around his shoulders and holds him tightly against her.

She loves him. She does not care what that makes her—hypocritical, despicable. She loves him more than she can stand, more than she can bear… and this, she knows, is the last time she will hold him. It is far too soon for such goodbyes—how badly she had wanted a life with him! The lengths to which she would have gone to make that happen!

All of it, undeserved. A happiness she should not have dared reach for.

It is far too soon for such goodbyes: she presses her nose to his scalp and inhales great lungfuls of his scent between sobs, trying to commit the smell of him to memory. Ilya, the beautiful; Ilya, the foolish. He is lost to her utterly, now—beyond where she can reach him.

When he wakes, he will not even recognize her.

 

 

It takes him altogether too long to wake up. All the while, the castle horns blare—dogs, howling in the distance. As soon as his eyes blink open, she hoists him to his feet, guiding him over to the stolen horse.

“What—what am I… where am I?” he asks, voice thick. “How much did I drink? Who are you?”

He is half-awake, and she is a stranger to him, but looks her up and down and he waggles his brow, and she can see the suggestive comment on the tip of his tongue—that is pain enough. She has reached her limit. Whatever he is going to say, she cannot bear to hear it. She cuts him off.

“You are just outside the city walls of Vesuvia, to the south,” Aredhel says, as matter-of-factly as she can. She tries her best to keep the emotion out of her voice—truth be told, she should not even be here, if the spell is to hold. But she has to see him on his way. She pushes him over to the steed until he gets the idea, hooks his foot clumsily into the stirrup—she hoists him up the rest of the way as best she can, shoving at his thighs until he’s mounted the horse. Once he has, she unties the horses reins and hands them to him.

“The alarms you are hearing mean the palace guard is hunting for someone.”

He blinks a few times at the yellow palace walls, bewildered, before he turns back to her. And the way he looks at her—he does not recognize her in the least (now, she is nothing but a stranger to him)—twists something awful inside of her.

“Who, uh,” he asks, apprehensively. “Who are they looking for, exactly?”

“You,” she says, without hesitating. Like ripping a bandage: she cannot linger. She has already had her goodbye. The man in front of her does not love her; to keep him here is selfish, and it will bring her no comfort. “You’d better get going,” she says, before coming around to the back of the horse and giving him a firm slap on the haunch.

She nearly gets kicked—she steps out of the way of the hoof just in time—but after the kick (which nearly throws Ilya, but he holds fast) the horse is galloping away, out east, down the hill and into the distance.

 

 

_Under the tumultuous skies of a coming storm, with each jolt of the boat kissing seaspray into their faces, he had held her; he had pressed a kiss between her brows and claimed her as his. She had tasted sweat and sea salt and tears on his cheek when she’d kissed it, the taste of him as salty as the bitters he favors but twice as sweet. The words he speaks, the visions he weaves, when he swears to her:_

_“I would have given you everything.”_

_Soft promises ahead of the tempest, the sky pressing down upon them, and the lagoon swift along the sides of the boat—soft promises, easy to make when they would be impossible to fulfill, but still she had believed him. “Tell me about it?” she had asked, with her own impending ending closing in on her, and so she had felt, then, no fear, nor guilt, even if Asra could see her where she sat—she had reached out to touch his chest, to feel his heart beating beneath his ribs, a rhythm she had missed since he had pulled away from her in the skiff._

_“The life we would have had. Will you? I want—I’d like to hear you talk about it.”_

_“Stay with me,” he had begged her, “and I will give it to you. Whatever you ask of me. I will learn how to garden; I will sing your flowers tall. When you go to the forest to gather I will run the till at the shop and turn my ears at every chime of the bell at the doors, hoping to greet you.”_

_The plague is sinking its teeth into her. Every part of her aches, but the pressure of Ilya’s hands clutching her to him is worth enduring—is easy to endure—for it means that he is holding her, and in his arms she feels peaceful and safe, wrapped in soft promises. The life he describes is an impossible thing, but it is so beautiful—a bright thing to think on at the end, a dream to hold tight to. The plague is sinking its teeth into her, and the wind whips he hair about her face and wicks the sweat from her brow, but the burn of the sickness recedes, for a moment, when his lips meet her forehead in a tender kiss._

_“I will rise with you each morning and stay at your side every night, wherever we are; we can stay here or we can leave, start over elsewhere. I will show you… so many things, I will lay you down in golden fields and—”_

_“And love me?” she had asked, so full of delight she felt ablaze with it: here, in this boat, he had pushed her away; now, he holds her, promises her a world they won’t have. But he holds her—he holds her, and he does not let go, and that is all that she had wanted really, since the moment she’d met him._

_“We will rumple the grain as I make love to you,” he swore, “and the sky will be blue, and when the trade winds pick up we will go elsewhere: I will show you green rivers and the sharpest, tallest of mountains. I will follow wherever you lead me. I will do nothing unless it should please you. I will lay the world at your feet.”_

 

 

‘ _Stay with me,’_ he had begged, and that only a few days ago. ‘ _I will follow wherever you lead_ ,’ but he had left her behind—there will be no gardening, no shopkeeping. When the bell of the shop door chimes it will never again be followed the merry clap of his boots on the tile. She will never wake beside him; she will never fall asleep holding him. He will show her nothing at all. 

There will be no rumpled grain, no blue sky above them; the trade winds will only carry him farther and farther away from her. The world is a wide and frightening place, and he is gone out into it now, without her… running, though without the memory to remind him of why or how fast he really needs to run.

 

 

The palace horns continue to blare; the dogs bay. But they are searching for Ilya, not for her; if she runs, she thinks, they will not follow. One last glance to the horizon… but the hills have already swallowed Ilya and the white horse both. They have receded so far into the distance that she can no longer make them out. Ilya is gone—he has left, and there is no reason to linger.

She turns and races, following the line of the aqueduct back into the city, back to her shop.

_‘I am alive, but at what cost? All are punished: the Count in his pyre, the Countess in a dreamless, feverish slumber; Asra wanting a master, Ilya amnesic and in exile. And as for myself? I am bereft of the one thing I was loathe to lose. I have clawed and wounded and killed to keep Ilya safe, to keep him close; all the blood I have spilt has only made things worse.’_

But there is more to lose yet. Her freedom, and her very life—a costly gift from Ilya. She will not lose it now; she will not spurn his sacrifice.

 

 

The house has not felt so empty since those first weeks after Albert’s death. The whole place feels raw, wounded. The card room in the corner of the shop is clear, but she can still smell the incense from Asra’s invocations; the wallpaper is still charred in places from the hexes she’d fired when the guards had dragged her to the Lazaret. The house is blemished, marred by memory, scarred—in that moment, she is envious of Ilya, and his forgetfulness.

She feels so helpless… so utterly lost. She has tossed Ilya, defenseless, to the wolves; she is far from safe herself, if the palace servants are to be believed about the Truthsayer.

Albert would know what to do. Would have smoothed her hair from her face and pulled just the right book from the shelf and opened it to precisely the right incantation all without looking at the spines or the indexes. But Albert is gone, long dead, no matter what she had seen at the gate. And though she might have consulted the Magician, she no longer could tell if that was even an option—if Lucio had taken that from her. She felt danger within her Arcana—to try and commune with any of them would be a gamble—and she was so very short on time.

‘ _I will not stand to see him killed. But he cannot do it alone. He will need someone to remind him to run, to be vigilant—he will need someone to protect him._ ’

The house is blemished, marred by memory, scarred—she can see Albert everywhere, as clearly as she had at her gate: bent over the card table, clipping down the stairs to greet her… hunched over the display case, holding a single egg out to her between his hands.

The answer shoots through her like an arrow shaft and the pain of it threatens to break her.

It is a dark magic. It will be painful… difficult to invoke, and more difficult to endure. But Aredhel has killed a man. Not by proxy or by poison, but with her own hands, in front of her. She has killed a man and she feels not an ounce of regret (beyond the regret she feels for having tangled Ilya in her mess) and any pain she feels (any blemish her soul must suffer to deliver him) is a debt she will gladly pay.

Albert Mooney’s house is full of mysteries, impossible architectures. It swallows and then spits up doorways at will, but it has not had the will (or the incentive) to do so for quite some time. Pantries have been closed to Aredhel for years, sealed up when Albert died. But she knows—she knows what lies behind the panel on the far wall, that which Albert and Brona always had enough sense to hide from her.

She needs it now. She will break the house, if she must.

With a shove of her shoulder, she pushes aside the shelf of carefully organized extracts and oils; they clatter to the ground and roll across the tiled floor, but she pays them no mind. Aredhel places her hands flat against the cleared wall, and closes her eyes.

The house _groans._

Aredhel grits her teeth.

“There is nothing left to hide from me,” she hisses. “I am your niece, my blood your blood, daughter of your sister. Albert, I swear, you will give me what I need or I will tear this place apart _brick by brick_ —”

The door springs open with a click.

Aredhel takes a step back in shock. 

She cannot count the times she has stood in front of this very door, trying to crack it open like a walnut, only to have her hours of patience and problem solving go utterly unrewarded—a light laugh, as delighted as it is nervous, bubbles out of her. And there it is, that smell—dusty and loamy—the smells that always clung to Albert’s clothes when he came out of the potions closet.

She swallows, then steps over the threshold, into the only room in the house in which she has never been.

It is a narrow room, hardly more than an aisle lined on either side with eight foot shelves. The only light comes from a small medallion in the roof above, and even that is hardly enough to read by. She must squint to make out the slanted, ornate script of Albert’s handwriting, crouching in the dark to make out the parchment labels, yellowed with age.

When she finds what she seeks, a strange and unnatural calm settles over her. She sighs, sweetly; her fingers brush the bulbous glass of the flask and wipe away five years’ worth of dust. Her fingertip comes away brown, but through the glass she can see that the potion is clear: there are no lees or bubbles that would suggest that the charm meant to preserve it has faltered. It is, as yet, unspoiled.

A Truthsayer was coming—and Truthsayers were thorough. Even if she were not a suspect, there were people who could put her in Lucio’s room the night of his murder. When they found Ilya gone, well… it was only a matter of time before they came looking for her.

Ilya is gone, and she has spurned Asra, and that leaves her with nothing but this house—she is sure as shit not leaving. And she is sure as _fuck_ not going to hang for Lucio’s murder.

They would send the Truthsayer for her, one way or the other. And the best way to guarantee her safety—the only way, really—was to let the Truthsayer look her in the eye, and to tell the courtiers that he could find no trace within her of any memory of murdering the Count. Then, they could not hang her; they could not even accuse her under such circumstances, so well-regarded was a Truthsayer’s word.

She cannot use the same spell she used on Ilya. That spell had been like taking a scalpel to Ilya’s memory; with her own, she will use a bludgeon.

She is not precisely sure _what_ Albert has mixed into the forgetfulness potion she has stolen from the closet—grave dirt, probably, and valerian, among other things (more likely than not some subtle poison, given the potion’s alleged strength)—but she knows that the more of it she drinks, the more she will forget. A few sips are certainly enough to forget the last forty-eight hours.

And if, in the wash, she loses her memories of Ilya, too… well, maybe that was for the best.

She cannot bear to keep these memories; she wants to be rid of them. ‘ _I will learn how to garden; I will sing your flowers tall.’_ All those lost futures—golden fields, Moonglow mountains—she will not have to endure those broken promises if she forgets they were ever made to begin with. And the loss she is about to suffer, the great severing she is about to commit—so blasphemous and violent it is practically a taboo—if she swallows enough of that foul liquid, she will forget that, too.

And of Asra…? More likely than not, she will forget him. Perhaps this is also for the best, though in the end, she is nothing but proud of him. He is so talented, too bright for the turn her story is taking—and she has really, truly, been horrible to him. If he finds her here—if she does not recognize him, has no memory of him—then he will have the excuse he needs to leave. He will be free of her.

(She think of no greater gift to give him, after what she has put him through.)

She hitches a sob at the thought, and bids the house to close away the room. If Asra returns she does not want him to find the evidence of what she is about to do, the great act of self-mutilation she is about to commit.

 

 

As she hurries up the stairs to the second floor she uncorks the flask with her teeth; the first sip of it has her shuddering. It is a small sip—the barest taste on her tongue, to test its potency—and potent it _is._ It will not be long before its darkness claims her; she does not have any time for indecision if she wants to complete the rite before consciousness slips away from her.

Her steps on the stairs are like thunder.

On the second floor she crosses the room to the bed and stoops, hissing the incantation that wards the loose floorboard, then pries it upwards. Her hand plunges into the hollow and grabs Albert Mooney’s old book, shaking up years of dust and grime.

The house groans.

“Oh, hush.”

The crimson leather creaks when she pries open the cover. Albert Mooney’s scribbles still line the parchment—in places, there are stains that she suspects (with good reason, given the book’s content) are blood. _Fool._ It had taken her two years to figure out what he had spent three years trying (and failing) to do, but the answer had so viscerally horrified her that she was glad he had never found out.

(Privately, a part of her had always thought that he had. Perhaps Albert knew exactly the cost of bringing some shadow of his wife back over from the otherworld: a dark bargain, a severing of his soul. Aredhel would not have been surprised to learn that the source of his bitterness came not from the fact that he had never found the answer, but that, even in knowing, he simply could not bring himself to do it. The rite she was about to invoke was only slightly less horrible in comparison—she did not know if that made her a better magician than or uncle or a worse one.)

But now… now she knew what it was like. Albert’s grief. He had spent half a life with Brona and lost her. The taste of Aredhel’s grief is different—she had come to love Ilya, to promise herself to him, prepared to throw her life to the wind and follow him, only to lose him so violently—but it is similar, she thinks, in magnitude. She has lost not the history of many treasured years, but the possibility of years to come, and she _aches._

Of course, it is not quite the same: after all, Ilya is not yet dead. However, he is undeniably in danger, and it is because he has tried so hard to protect her, again and again. He is not yet dead—and she will not allow his death to come to pass. She could not protect him herself—not really—but there was a way….

The cost would be terribly high—only slightly less steep than the necromancy Albert had wished to perform—but she would pay it.

 _“I want you to be safe,”_ he had said, turning her chin to face him. _“The price is steep, but it’s one I’m more than willing to pay.”_

(She would pay it, and forget before she lived to regret it.)

These past months she has tasted both love and loss twice over. She had confronted her own death, been dragged to the Lazaret, been captured by the Count. Confronted Albert, or a shade of him. Broken each of the promises she had made herself about the kind of magician she wanted to be—she has become a murderer instead. Worst of all she has felt the sting of Ilya’s betrayal, the secrets he kept from her—and how deeply and desperately she loved him anyway, shaming even herself. And how, in the end, no matter how fiercely she loved him—even if it had been enough to forgive him—it had not been enough to keep him beside her.

It is the most terrible, wretched feeling of despair. Perhaps the anguish of it has driven her mad. The plague had been painful, yes, but this? This is a misery that she has never known, so terrible it leaves her gasping.

After all that, there is nothing left in this world, she thinks, that can frighten her.

 

 

She kicks off her shoes before climbing up the ladder to the roof. It is still twisted from her abduction; as the guards had tried to carry her down she had wrapped a hand around one of the rungs, and she had not let go, not even as the metal warped and her hands began to bleed. It dangles from the roof from a single bolt, but she does not need it to hold for long. She tosses Albert’s tome upwards through the exit, tucks the potion into her pocket, and scurries up the ladder.

Outside the air smells of ozone, the tingling burn of anxious, arcane energy. The house is raising its hackles. But it cannot sway her from her purpose: one last rite in Ilya’s name. One more prayer to loose like an arrow before forgetfulness takes her.

She picks up the book, carves a path between the wrecked planters and spilt soil, and makes a beeline for the hawthorne tree.

The bark of the tree is rough to the touch—but she swears, the loose flakes curl and reach towards her even as her fingers move to caress it.

She swallows.

Then she turns, casts her gaze around the roof. A few feet away, one of the planters has not been utterly destroyed, and it is fairly high—a few feet off the ground. She hurries over and places the book upon it, so that it will not get wet, then she returns to the hawthorne’s feet.

Both hands—instead of just one—reach, tentatively, for the tree’s trunk.

It goes soft beneath her touch, pliant as fruit flesh. So sudden is this newfound obedience that it wrests a gasp of delight and surprise from her—but then, a twitch of exhaustion within her (the potion beginning its work) and she remembers that she cannot tarry, not even for this wonder. With a grimace, she digs her fingers into the bark, and pries the supple wood apart.

The tree bleeds saltwater, the brackish pond water of a distant land—an ancestral home she has never seen, to which she will never return. A frothing rush spills from the gouge Aredhel carves in the hawthorne’s fresh. It sloshes down the trunk and the front of Aredhel’s dress, soaking her to the skin, splashing onto the roof behind her. But the water is not yet her concern; she continues to widen the wound in the core of the tree, until it is gaping far enough for her to slip her hand into it.

Through the torrent she grasps, sinking past wrist, up to her elbow—she is nearly at her shoulder with the cold water splashing in her face, into her mouth and up her nose before her fingers find smooth metal. Her fingers wrap around the handle, and tug—but it is a battle. The blade resists; she can feel many small tuggings, like when pulling the pit from a peach, the woody filaments holding it (in the heart of the tree, in the pit of the pond, in a world far away.)

But this is no time for patience. She cannot use any blade, she requires _this_ one—this knife which cuts not flesh but quick to the soul with surgical precision. With a grunt, she wrenches her arm and pulls the knife free; once it is past the bark, the tree seals itself with a gurgling slurp.

The knife is an old heirloom—a work of art—but she wastes not a minute looking at it. Instead, she turns, and, yes—the hawthorn’s bloodwater has been collected as it should. In between the root-arms of the hawthorne is a small pool, still water reflecting the branches and white blossoms and the blue sky. Water mint and vervain ring its circumference, and their delicate smells greet her.

It is still enough—clear enough—that she can see her own face reflected back at her, her eyes still pink from weeping. This shatters her hesitance: she toes in, as much to get the process on with as to dispel her own image. Then she turns, and extends her arm, calling to Albert’s book; it flies, rather than floats, across the roof and into her hands.

She shudders at how quickly it answers her call.

‘ _Are you happy now, you nasty old warlock?_ ’ she thinks. ‘ _Now that I am to become even wickeder and more wretched than you_.’

But even as the thought occurs to her, Aredhel knows it to be unfair. Albert would have been proud of her, yes, but not because of the feat of magic she was about to perform. He and Brona both would be proud of who she has become, willing to make such sacrifice for the sake of another, for she has allowed herself to love and trust in a way she has never before—how it _hurts—_

‘ _Sad, my heart?_ ’

(As Albert’s book had answered her call, so has her familiar.)

Her eyes turn to the feeling of him, and find the raven where he has landed in one of the hawthorne’s boughs above. She is unafraid—she is _committed_ —but the sight of him devastates her. 

The tears come easily, then; they run down her cheeks to meet the water at her feet.

This is her fault, her burden to bear. She has gotten Ilya into this mess—he had been trying to protect her. She had allowed him to talk her into making him forget, but if he had forgotten her, what else had he misremembered? Such shellwork was a delicate art; she had been careful as she could, but what if she has taken more than she should have? What if Ilya has forgotten how to protect himself? How to stay safe, how to keep watch—

It was too late, now, for Aredhel to protect him.

But Malak could.

It would not be the same, of course; Ilya was no witch. But if she let him go… if she severed her connection with Malak, her dearest friend, he could look after Ilya. The two halves of her heart, one looking after the other—complete, somewhere, far away from her.

(That will leave her with nothing, she knows, but ‘ _nothing_ ’ is precisely what she deserves.)

“I’m so sorry, my eyes, my love,” she spoke wetly through her tears.

Then she waded to the shallows, opened the book to the rite and scanned the page one last time for good measure. Setting it aside, she stepped into the center of the pool; when she had reached it, the water came up to her thighs.

She clutched the knife in her hand. She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath.

“I am Aredhel MacAllister Mooney, daughter of Nemain, one of the last of the Darach of Iouernia. I invoke the sacred Rite of Transference.”

Then she raised the knife—Brona’s knife, the knife that slips between worlds—and pressed the tip of it to the flesh of her breast. A pale blue fire glows in the knife’s blade; gritting her teeth, she forces the tip inward.

The pain is… _exquisite_ , though still preferable to the inaction of her misery. This suffering is intentional, and necessary; and anyway, soon, it will all be a forgotten dream. She does not bleed—though the blade appears to be sunk within her, it has not torn her skin—but still it is an agony, as though her soul was rending in two.

‘ _Well,_ ’ Aredhel thought, wryly, ‘ _I suppose it kind of is._ ’

It severs not skin but the pale, ancient, and luminescent threads that bind Aredhel and Malak together, the stitches that have weaved them tighter and tighter together since Albert placed Malak’s egg into Aredhel’s hands in the shop below. And there are so many threads to loose—she will not cry out (it would make her feel so weak, to scream now) but it is keen enough to make her weep and shudder as she digs around in her heart, snapping threads until nothing remains.

When Malak goes, he does not go softly.

It is like being swallowed by a great silence—like being underwater. One second he is there, and in the next—their last connection severed—he is not. From the hawthorne boughs above, Malak looks at her in what she thinks (but no longer _knows_ ) is confusion—or is it distress? or both?—and the fact that she cannot really tell anymore wrenches a sob from her lips.

She reaches out… one last time, Malak descends from the tree, and lands on her outstretched wrist.

Aredhel pulls him close to her, running her free hand down his back, rubbing his head the way he always liked. “Goodbye, my old friend,” she whispers. “Oh, you are going to visit so many places, aren’t you? See so many amazing, incredible things. Probably watch Ilya make a fool out of himself once or twice—you will have to be especially vigilant then. But I have trusted you since the moment I held you in my hands, and I know you will keep him safe. And I am going to miss you so very, very much.”

She lowers her mouth, and presses one last kiss to the crown of her familiar’s head.

Then she raises her arms and tosses Malak into the air… and he goes, does not even spare a backwards glance to her. He rides the wind high above the roof and into the sky, then banks towards the east, in the direction Ilya had fled on horseback.

As Aredhel watches him go, she fishes for the flask in her pockets. A Truthsayer is coming, and already the first sip of Albert’s potion is working its way into her.

She drains half the bottle before her legs go out from beneath her; she barely manages to claw her way to the edge of the pool, her body held between the water and the land, before forgetfulness swallows her.

 

 

(The last thing she thinks about before she thinks on these things no more is the fjords of Hjallnir; she holds to that thought, and the cadence of Ilya’s voice, rolling and pleased as he had described to her what the trees would look like. He had promised to take her walking there, and into the forests of the giant oaks. But then, as even in Hjallnir the fog rises from the sea into the waiting arms of the fjords, shrouding its trees in the thickest of mist, that image too slips away from her, and she is left emptied utterly.)

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Asra is so tired—so utterly spent—that he toes out of his shoes two blocks from the shop, and walks the rest of the way barefoot. He relishes the press of each cobblestone to his arches, and the freedom from the formalwear he’s been stuck in for hours.

It had all happened so fast; one moment he had been enjoying digestifs with Nadia out on the veranda after that terrible banquet of Lucio’s, and in the next, she had collapsed… and as terrible and traumatizing and painful as it had been to see her so weak, he was glad he had been there. If he had not… if the doctors had not reached her in time… he shudders to think.

He has lost Aredhel. He cannot lose Nadi, too.

(Though for the moment she is good as lost: a deep and dreamless slumber is the best that Asra could do for her. The poison—of which no trace nor evidence has been found, but which he suspects nonetheless—had devastated her body so utterly that there would be no waking her, not for some time. Not until she recovered.)

It has been a long and tiring day; Faust, coiled over his shoulders, is already asleep. And though the house is marred with memory and the drama of the recent days, he cannot help the contented sigh that slips past his lips when his feet find the threshold; he is _home._

Contentment turns to curiosity, then concern; the door to the shop is unlocked.

That’s strange.

It’s possible he left the door ajar, in his haste to reach the palace. But it’s not likely. He can be scatter-brained about some things, sure, but usually not that. His chest tightens, thinking of the palace guards that broke into the home and dragged Aredhel from the roof; cautiously, his aura reaches out through the rooms and the rafters for any sign of a trespasser, but finds nothing. The house feels empty.

His mouth twitches in an uneasy frown, and he steps into the shop. 

Asra is responsible. Even though it’s possible he left the door ajar, he doesn’t think he did. More likely, someone else with a key returned… and based on the rumors he’s heard in the castle the past twenty-four hours (the Count, deceased, and the culprit caught, after surrendering so readily) he can hazard a guess. He had heard the hunting bells, and the baying of the dogs; though he has not been told, it’s probably fair to assume that whatever his crimes, Aredhel broke him out. 

…and then left with him, probably. At that thought, he cannot suppress a mild twinge of annoyance: ‘ _I’m sure she was in a rush, but she could have at least locked the—_ ’

Across the room, the wall slides loose with a click.

Asra does not think the house is haunted. Aredhel jokes about it, sometimes, when things go bang in the night. ‘ _It’s Uncle Albert’s ghost_ ,’ she says, though Asra had always thought that she believed in no such thing. 

Sure, the house is a little weird—but what house built by an eccentric magician would not be? It is only his magic that keeps the ceiling of the second floor from buckling under the weight of the roof garden; the house is held together with more magic than mortar. And so (sometimes) the house settles, not so differently from the way that ordinary houses do—with a great groaning and wheezing and the occasional cracking—but with a distinctly arcane flair. Sometimes the walls stretch, or seem to close in, at times when his arguments with Aredhel have become particularly heated. Things… shift.

But this—the sudden appearance of a door he has never seen before—this is something else entirely.

“What the hell, Albert…” Asra sighs under his breath. Faust must sense his unease; she is awake again, and slithers along his bicep, squeezing his arm.

‘ _Worried._ ’

But the house is empty—what is distressing her so? Asra raises his hand to scratch his familiar gently under her chin, but this is only a small comfort. Still, Faust is restless; she grows only more agitated as Asra crosses the shop to the newly opened door across the room.

He doesn’t blame her. Asra finds it vexing, too.

It's not just that the door is new, it’s that… it shouldn't be there, at all. Beyond the doorway is a room easily ten feet deep, smelling of must and ancient herbs. A circular skylight above lets in just enough light to see. But it shouldn’t be there—the room has no right to be there at all, because beyond the back wall of the shop is an alley, a passage. There's no space—no physical space—that could exist to accommodate such a storeroom. It makes Asra uneasy enough that he hesitates before stepping into it. 

He passes through the threshold unharmed. Beyond, dust dances in the scant light filtering in through the roof. Asra’s nose twitches; he sneezes. It startles Faust so badly she squeezes his arm tighter.

It’s a storeroom, he realizes. The shelves are lined with old potions and extracts, all hand-labelled in handwriting Asra has come to recognize as Albert’s. A faint hope trills in his chest—has the house shown him this room because within it lies the key to Nadia’s recovery? Perhaps, on these crammed shelves, there lies a cure—a panacea. As difficult as such a thing would be to craft, he wouldn’t put it past Albert Mooney—

But then, he spots it: one single ring of dust-free wood, as though something has been removed from the shelves recently. It must have been Aredhel. Again, he cannot help the faintest twinge of bitterness and annoyance (‘ _she has left me behind in this house, and she has not even told me all its secrets; all the years we spent together, and she did not trust me enough_ ’) as he leans towards the shelf, squinting at the label. But what could she have taken? If she came here to get something to help her break Ilya out, what kind of potion could she have possibly found useful in that—

Huh. That can’t be right. 

He squints again—Albert’s writing was so ornate it was nearly illegible—but no, he’s fairly certain he’s read correctly. It’s a forgetfulness potion that she’s taken from the shelves. But who had she planned to administer it to? And why?

Asra reaches out with his aura; the house feels empty. ‘ _Worried_ ,’ Faust repeats, and the house seems to groan in concurrence.

And following the groan—a creak, like weight shifting on the floorboards above. (But the house feels empty—) Asra leans his body out of the storeroom, turns his head towards the stairs, calls her name:

“Aredhel?”

Only silence greets him.

Though the space between the storeroom and the stairs… seems to have shrunk, even if only by a few inches. It is difficult to gauge. He has, after all, never seen the room from this vantage point before.

‘ _Trust your intuition,_ ’ Aredhel had always said. But trusting himself had nothing to do with whether or not he trusted the house.

That suspicion infuriates him. It is a building, not an entity, no matter how much Aredhel liked to joke and cajole otherwise. If he is worried about an intruder upstairs, he ought to simply go look; he’s exhausted from helping Nadia, but not so tired that he can’t manage a bit of magic if it comes to defending himself.

‘ _Worried._ ’

“Me too, Faust.”

The second floor is as empty as the first. As far as Asra can tell, nothing has been disturbed since he left the house the day before. The same dishes sit in the sink; what artifacts of any value are kept in the bedroom are still sat on the shelves. His half-finished mug of tea, long gone cold, still sits in the center of the kitchen table—

—it’s surface then disturbed by a single droplet of moisture that sends rings outward from the center where it lands.

But, ‘ _Albert’s house doesn’t leak,_ ’ he had assured Ilya, less than a weak ago one floor below, when he’d called on ancient magics to bestow upon the Doctor the one thing that could save Aredhel from death. In all the years he has lived here, the house has not leaked once—the ceiling of the second floor remains impossibly straight, despite the weight of soil and growth that sits above it.

And yet—yes—there, above the table, moisture is collecting, beading, dripping onto the kitchen table below.

His dread sinks through him like a stone through water, and he hurries to the warped ladder in the corner.

And—pale gold hair beneath the hawthorne tree, _she has come back! (To me?)_ She has returned to the place where their friendship began: beginnings and endings chasing themselves in circles around this roof. But why does the house feel so _empty_ , if she is right here? The sky is reflected in the puddle around her (and what a puddle! Where had all that water come from?) like the water he had crossed with Ilya to save her—and where is Ilya? Not a trace of him anywhere, either—

‘ _Worried!_ ’

A pitched cry of alarm; Faust directs his intention not to the place where she knees, palms opened and pointed upwards in her lap, but to the dirt two feet away, where an old tome of Albert’s lies open in a clutch of water mint; not far from its cover lies a half-empty flask.

Oh, no.

“Aredhel?”

Only silence greets him.

Asra reaches out for her with his aura… and touches nothing, brushes nothing. Where the feel of her should be there is only a void, a vacancy… it is as though she is not really there at all.

He scrambles over upset planters, crushing rosebushes and herbs beneath him as he rushes for her, now that it has become clear that something is deeply (irrevocably?) wrong. “Aredhel!” Feet-first into the brackish water she is knelt in, mud and muck splashing up the front of his most splendid trousers, but he is heedless of it; he does not stop until he is by her side, until he can look her in the face.

“Aredhel?”

But she is all silence and vacant stares, her eyes lost somewhere in the hawthorne blossoms above her. There is mud caked dry on her dress—how long has she knelt here? He whispers her name—the softest sound on his breath—but she does not react, neither to her name on his lips nor the brush of his fingers against her cheek, the small wound on the flesh of her neck. 

And why should she react? She is nothing. His magic tells him so. She is an empty vessel; she is a blank page. And though she has wounded Asra beyond measure (she has accused him of such darkness, spurned his affection) nothing, none of it, hurts him as deeply as the loss he faces now: she is gone, gone, and he is not sure there is anything in his power to do to bring her back.

“Oh, Aredhel,” Asra laments, pushing her hair back from her forehead. “What have you done?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to cedarmoons who did a pass on my first draft to make sure all the witchy business and plot twists were somewhat coherent <3 thank you 
> 
> should I have edited this one more time? probably. did I have the patience to wait that long? no.
> 
> I have known how this story ends since the moment I began it, and if you can believe it, I actually looked forward to writing this chapter. I thought I was going to enjoy it. My expectations could not have been farther from reality; it was actually agony to rip these two apart.
> 
> only the epilogue left now :)


	13. Epilogue

—————————— ASRA ——————————

  
  
  


And so the Mooney House, then—despite all Asra’s protestations to the contrary, throughout the seasons he has spent in the shelter of the house’s walls— _ becomes _ haunted, if it was not before. What else is there to call it? He shares its halls with a ghost.

Yes, she is a ghost of flesh, a weighted thing. (In the end, he cannot coax her from the rooftop, Asra has to carry her back into the house and onto the bed, and unthread the water mint from her hair.) But that is all she is: familiar skin, a familiar face, though never arranged in its familiar configurations. She does not laugh; she does not smile. When Asra speaks to her, Aredhel does not even look at him, her eyes glassy and unfocused. She reacts so little to the world around her, Asra often wonders if she really perceives it at all. He cannot tell if she is unable to hear his voice, or if she simply cannot understand the meaning of his words… if language, too, is now so distant and blurry she can no longer grasp it.

She can swallow. She can breathe. She can blink. For many months, she does little else. Except, sometimes—and this breaks Asra’s heart—she weeps.

Although that, too, is unfamiliar. In the years he’s known her few things have moved Aredhel to tears, and when she has cried it is more often out of rage than sorrow. How she heaved! All clenched teeth and red eyes, all gasping and howling in fury as she had been when Asra first told her what Lucio had done to Muriel. But now, her cries are silent. Her eyes water until her lids can no longer hold against the swollen surge, and then the tears spill down her cheeks, or cling to her pale lashes. But her brows do not pinch as they used to, and her lips do not quiver. It is as if even this sadness that stirs her (if that is what it is) is buried, or else held somewhere so far away from her body that it can barely reach her.

Asra has tried everything. He has brought her tea; he has sung to her the songs she used to hum beneath her breath; he has warmed her hands. Touched, tenderly, her cheek. None of this has any effect—the weeping ends when it ends. It is never within Asra’s power to console her.

Nor can he heal her. No salve nor spell will draw her back to him. She had once called him clever, brilliant—a brighter witch than she herself, the apprentice exceeding the skills of his master—but for all her praise, he is helpless in the face of the trauma she has inflicted upon herself.

This much is clear: she is lucky to have survived at all. A lesser witch would have been dead before Asra reached the roof. Asra had seen the near-empty bottle of Albert’s brew, more poison than potion; Asra had seen the blood-stained parchment of Albert Mooney’s book. He had seen the new scar, like a starburst, blossoming from the skin above her heart. He has not since seen any sign of her familiar, Malak… even though, in the condition that Aredhel was in, he should have been right at her side.

The thing she has done to herself is so horrible that for many weeks Asra could not even bring himself to believe it. Yes, the book was open to  _ that _ spell, but what could have driven Aredhel to such desperation that this hopeless, reckless act was her only recourse? What could make her willing to endure such suffering, such loneliness?

Asra can hardly bear to imagine making such a choice himself—Faust is as much a part of him as his hands, as his very memory. To lose her would be devastating. Frankly, he’s not sure he’d survive such a separation, himself. And the thought alone is enough to upset witch and familiar alike. After they find Aredhel on the roof—halved—Faust falls into an uncharacteristic depression. She molts  _ twice. _ At night, she coils herself as close to Asra as he will allow, now unable to sleep unless she can feel the warmth of his body beside her.

Aredhel has shredded herself; she has  _ torn herself to pieces. _ She turned herself into little more than an empty vessel—and for  _ what _ ? What could she possibly have to gain by it? Was the safety of another (one who had left  _ without her _ ) really worth such risk?

...but then, even in his fury, Asra is not a hypocrite. When these thoughts seize him he takes a deep breath until such bitterness recedes. The truth is that whatever she was trying to accomplish—hold safe— _ protect _ , it was likely she had justified her actions more or less the same way that Asra had justified his own. He, too, had put a life at risk for the chance he might protect someone he loved; it had just happened to be the life of another, and not his own.

(In the end, there is blame to share among the three of them, for how things ended. Whatever happened—and as the years pass, Asra is never entirely sure  _ what _ happened—it was the accumulation of many small things gaining speed, like rocks tumbling free from a cliff face. After all, all of this had begun with Asra breaking down, letting Ilya into the shop…. Yes, there is blame to share.)

  
  


She is empty, she is gone… so why, then, does the house feel so full?

She had always said, “ _ the house is haunted, Asra, can’t you feel it? _ ” He couldn’t—he had not tried terribly hard to reach for any such feeling. There are many kinds of hauntings, after all. He had taken her words as a kind of poetic hyperbole: the house is haunted,  _ for her. _ Is that not what a ghost is, after all—an imperfect memory? Aredhel had watched her two dearest kin pass away in the house. It would be only natural, if her perception of the house was therefore inextricably interwoven with both grief and memory. A kind of haunting—she could call it that, if she liked. If it helped.

But now, he thinks he should have taken her warnings more seriously.

The house  _ is _ haunted, and not solely by the phantom with whom he shares a bed. There is something else living inside of it. Perhaps it is a trapped spirit, some creature summoned by Albert years ago with which he’d failed to bargain and banished instead to some space in between: to rooms and chambers in the house that have no windows nor doors but sit, sideways-adjacent to the shop, waiting for the right spell to unlock them. Or perhaps it is nothing but a fingerprint, an arcane signature of the man who raised this house out of nothing but mortar and magic and dirt.

(Of course, there are many kinds of hauntings. Is the house haunted, or does the house  _ itself _ haunt? Over and over in the weeks after he finds Aredhel mute and vacant on the roof, the door to the potions closet—the door he had not previously known to exist—clicks open, unheeded. It is like an infected wound that refuses to heal, a scab that keeps splitting open.)

But this entity, whatever it may be—malevolent or benevolent, clever or clumsy, the house itself or another of its inhabitants—it is sympathetic to Aredhel. When she weeps, the window glass seems to thicken and cloud, dulling the shine of the sunlight. The walls clench like a chest tight with anxiety; contracting, they shrink the bedroom.

(He would think it was his imagination, but Asra can see the gouges from the furniture being scraped against the floorboards as the walls close in. And once, when the effect was particularly severe, the ceiling had come so low it brushed the tallest curls of Asra’s hair. Asra had been halfway to Aredhel’s side, ready to carry her out of the house before its walls crushed them both until—at once—it had stopped, and with a great sigh, like that of a beast of burden resigned to the weight on its back, the house expanded once more to its typical size.)

Occasionally, out of nowhere, the house will wheeze—the wooden beams groaning, the cracks in the plaster widening—and each time this sound is followed by another of Aredhel’s weeping hours, staring out the window as her tears spill and dry and their salt crusts like ice on her cheeks.

There are many kinds of haunting—this one, perhaps, is not so terrible. For if it is so—if the uncanny behavior of the house is borne of some connection with Aredhel, and Asra is not, simply, in his desperation, imagining a relationship between them that does not exist—it is proof that within her, something yet lingers. She is more than a body, she is not just familiar skin. Asra cannot feel her, cannot reach her… but perhaps the house can.

It is the faintest, maddest wish. The glimmer of something far beneath the surface of the ocean, too deep to dive for: the glint of gold or the false hope of the scales of fish, flashing in the dark.

  
  
  


Summer cools into autumn; autumn chills into winter. The hawthorn’s leaves color and then fall like an orange skirt around the house before the wind carries them away.

When the first cold spell brings the winter illnesses and aches with it, Asra reopens the apothecary. It is a matter of necessity: already, he has spent their meagre savings. He must sell  _ something _ to get them through the winter, and tonics and balms fetch higher prices than masks and wood carvings. For a few hours a week, Asra unlocks the shop’s door… and these hours become his happiest.

When a customer comes to the apothecary seeking remedy for an illness, Asra knows what tinctures will be effective. Asra has tonics for congestion, for fevers, for coughing—all the ailments that come with the dry cold of the season. Again, Asra can help: proof that he is not utterly incapable of alleviating the suffering of others. And it is good, to feel useful; it is good, not to feel so impotent, as he has felt caring for Aredhel. For months all of his efforts to ease her pain or call her back have only ended in failure.

The days grow shorter. By the time Asra closes shop in the evenings, the sky is already black. One night, he stands behind the glass display, counting the money in the till, taking inventory of his wares. Over the weekend, he’ll have to make more of Brona’s arthritis cream—only a few jars remain, and they sell quickly this time of year. And that ointment—the cough suppressant, the one with the mint—

The house gives a fitful, anguished groan—it steals Asra’s attention. It’s been lamenting like this more frequently, and more loudly, as though it is trying to warn him of something. But Asra does not speak the language of creaking stairs and groaning floorboards, and he is not magician enough to read what fresh sorrow the house’s mood portends.

‘ _ Albert, please. What am I doing wrong? How am I supposed to help her? _ ’

The window glass clatters like nervous teeth in its pane; a whistling draft gasps through the slender space beneath the door frame. Somewhere, further in the house—among the labyrinthine tunnels and corridors that Asra has neither seen nor accessed but knows, by now, to exist—the draft slams shut door, after door, after door, a cacophony that rises until it crests and is crowned by another sound: the knob of the front door to the apothecary slipping free of its catch, the hinges creaking as the winter eases it ajar.

The shop bell rings, merry and bright, but unusually piercing. On instinct, Asra’s hands cover his ears.

Before the bell’s peal slows and softens into silence its drowned out by a deep thunder at the top of the stairs. Aredhel—who has yet to so much as  _ stand on her own two feet _ without Asra holding her up—comes flying down the staircase like a bat out of hell, like a galvanized body, like a banshee. The scarf Asra had left wrapped around her shoulders has fallen to her elbows and flows behind her like a river of blood. Her lips are parted in a surprised and a timid kind of hope; her eyes, full-moon-wide, search the threshold.

When she finds it empty—the door banging in its frame, blown ajar by only the wind—she freezes. The atmosphere of the shop turns viscous, thickens like the air swells with moisture before the first clap of a breaking storm; Asra calls her name, “ _ Aredhel, _ ” but even to his ears, his voice sounds muffled.

And yet, the shrieking of the kettle—hysterical and shrill—cuts through the empty house like a knife through butter.

(Asra had not set the kettle on the stove. There had not even been water left in its belly.)

Aredhel grips the banister tightly; shudders—and the ceiling in the shop drops, falls a hand’s length nearer to the floor. Her feet are rooted to the last of the stairs, and her toes curl, clinging to the woodgrain, as her brows pinch in confusion. The red scarf pools and then stills. In her bewilderment—her pain—Aredhel is statuesque.

Then her knees give out from beneath her.

When Asra reaches her side, the hairs on the back of her neck and her arms are standing on end; he wraps his arms around her shoulders and adjusts the scarf, covering the bare skin of her arms. In Asra’s embrace, she trembles. He moves his hands to her arms, trying to rub some of the warmth back in them—she has grown so cold—before he realizes the true cause of her shaking.

She is crying, now— _ really _ crying—a tightness in her chest, the stifled rumble of a half-choked wail in the back of her throat, each sob enough to shake the whole of her body.

Upstairs, the kettle screeches.

Never before has Aredhel wept like this. Never before has she stood—walked— _ ran! _ But at what cost is such progress? She still cannot (or will not) respond when Asra calls to her, and in the months he’s cared for her, she’s never been so plainly distressed. He cannot coax her back onto her feet.

In the end—as he has often done—he lifts Aredhel into his arms, and carries her back to the bed.

This—whatever new manifestation of her trauma ‘ _ this _ ’ is—is almost worse than having her vacant. There still isn’t the faintest blush of an aura around her, but Asra does not need to see it to know that such a halo would be twisted, convulsing, tormented.

On the second floor, Asra sets her upon the mattress. Aredhel curls around her core and turns away from him. Her arm twists over her stomach, hand gripping tight at the seam of her dress; more for his comfort than her own, Asra reaches for her, and covers her hand with his.

But then—isn't that something... really  _ stunning _ —her fingers (which have not been moved by her command for months) come, clumsily but determinedly, to knot with his.

(He, Asra, to whom she has thus far demonstrated not a shred of recognition.)

She holds his hand, and she weeps.

What kind of healer is Asra, really? Not nearly so bright nor clever as Aredhel always claimed. Tonics and tinctures are easy magic, easy success, far overshadowed by his failures. Six months later and still the Countess sleeps, deep and dreamless—the kindest fate he’d been able to bargain for her. Aredhel has been in his care, and she has hardly improved. She has swung from listlessness to  _ agony _ , and Asra can’t even figure out whether or not that is, in some way, a good sign. What agony could hold her, if she remembers nothing of her old life? Is it a victory to be celebrated or a worse defeat, if she has begun to remember, but remembers only pain? Oh, but how she had  _ leapt _ down the stairs, two at a time,  _ racing towards the door…. _

(...seeking someone whom Asra suspects will never be waiting on the threshold.)

What can Asra do in the face of such mute sorrow? He holds her hand, tracing circles on her back until she drifts off to sleep.

  
  


Asra has never been an early riser, but that changes after he becomes his master’s caretaker.

Every morning, no matter the weather, when he rises from bed he climbs straight to the roof. Faust joins him, though she often dozes, drifting in and out of slumber from where she lies coiled in the pouch of his pocket.

Here he takes his first cup of tea among the greenery, and watches the city wake. A gift to himself, a moment of quiet reflection to summon his courage before his day commences.

(No matter what tragedies he has endured here, Asra still loves the roof garden. With Muriel’s help, he had repaired the broken planters and trellises. He has disposed of the wooden slats that used to serve as a platform for the mattress; in their place, he has hung a hammock from the tree’s branches. He has tended, as best as he could, to the wild green things Albert and Aredhel had planted before him; he plants a few bulbs of his own, for no medicinal or practical purpose, but for the beauty of their blooms. Something to look forward to come spring. ‘ _ If nothing else changes, still there will be the crocuses.’ _ )

Windsound sweeps through the dry rush of the dead plants. Dry and brittle bones; perhaps Asra has become like that. For too many mornings, Asra ha hoped that Aredhel would show some sign of recovery; for too long, her condition has remained the same. Asra has had to calcify, a little; he has had to harden himself, so that he can endure the weight of his persistent failure, his own deficiency.

But now, it is winter. The hawthorn tree is bare; the planters are filled with stems withered and golden, the greenery deep in its dark soil dreams, its winter slumber. Steam rises from the mug in Asra’s hands, and when the taste of the smoky tea brings a satisfied sigh to his lips, he can see his breath on the air. The days are short. The morning light is soft.

After the events of the previous evening Asra doubly dreads descending the ladder and returning to the bedroom. In what condition will he find Aredhel? When she wakes, will the distress she had felt—the weeping that had only waned when sleep had claimed her—return to her? Or will she be unchanged utterly, just as vacant and lifeless as she was before the sound of the shop bell roused her from her apathy? Asra asks himself which of these fates would be more difficult to endure; in the end, he cannot decide.

An old mindfulness trick:  _ focus on your breath, _ the same way his parents taught him when he was young. As he turns from the roof and back into the house he counts his breath; he tallies each step of his feet on the ladder rungs. This persistent pit of stress in his stomach has not been so heavy and hard in weeks. Instead of giving him hope, seeing Aredhel last night only made him fear.

As every morning, Asra climbs down the ladder and he calls to her, softly, as he crosses the room. “Aredhel?” As every morning, Aredhel does not reply.

But when he moves to get her out of bed, she lifts her arms out towards him.

In between his chest and his lips, Asra’s delighted laugh turns into something more like a gasp. This simple gesture brushes the cobwebs off all his dusty lost hopes. He wraps his arms around her feeble body and her hands come to his shoulders and seize—slowly, with a trembling effort—the colorful cloth of his tunic.

Gone are the grace and the dexterity that possessed her on her flight down the stairs, but not her will. Aredhel proves both confounded and infuriated by her own feebleness in equal measure. Frost crystalizes on the bedroom window, but she fixates only on her hands: she cycles through stillness and movement. The slow but mindful curling and uncurling of her fingers, no faster than the pace of a flower unfurling, but she keeps at it until she can clench her hand into a tight fist. Against the wooden floorboards, her toes curl and uncurl, the arches of her feet lifting again and again like a rolling tide until her woollen socks settle once more against the ground.

  
  


The winter deadens to it deepest cold. Aredhel is as fierce as the cold winds that whip off the harbor and wheeze through the cracks in the house. With practice she has become strong enough to stand on her own legs. She is yet mute—she does not understand Asra unless he can convey his meaning with gesture—but the standing, in itself, is a victory. It is proof that (physically, at least) her condition might yet be improved.

It’s late in the afternoon when Asra comes home from the market and hears, over the shop bells, the sound of the glass baubles and chimes in the bedroom window chirping so loudly he can hear them from the threshold of the front door. That's odd—he had, he was certain, shut that window, and it would not be like Aredhel to open it. What wind disturbs them?

That old, familiar pit of unease in his stomach has dulled in recent weeks, in light of Aredhel’s proress; now, it hardens. He clutches his groceries to his chest, and hurries up the stairs.

He calls her name before he reaches the landing.  _ “Aredhel?” _ His hands fumble with the knob before he thrusts the door open... only to find the second floor vacant. The bed is empty, and the chairs have been left arranged neatly around the kitchen table, where Asra left them. Aredhel is nowhere to be seen, not sitting on the cushions near the shelves nor making determined laps around the room to strengthen her stride.

“Aredh-”

Biting wind of winter on the back of his neck—the bedroom window is shut, but Asra can feel it anyway. And the chimes, clanging, spinning, humming. Asra turns. Propped against the wall behind him is the ladder that leads to the roof and, above, the hatch door is ajar.

Asra sets the groceries in their bags upon the floor, before racing up the ladder and into the night.

Behind the hawthorn tree, in the west, the faintest hint of cerulean still kisses the sea. Above, the sky has gone utterly cobalt, save for the glittering of the stars which seem in their twinkling to be delighting in the clear cold. It is dark, but there is light enough spilling onto the roof that Asra can make out a figure, sitting cross-legged beneath the hawthorn tree.

“ _ Aredhel.” _

Asra weaves between the rebuilt planters and gold, grasping fingers of winter-dead vines to the hawthorne. It has shed its leaves for the winter; it is a squat and bald thing, it's branches drooping low and fat, naked and morose. Aredhel sits, cross-legged, in a nest of its tangled roots. Her feet are red, and her lips purple. ( _ How long has she been out here? _ ) Her cheeks and the tip of her nose are rosy—Asra will have to give her a tonic tonight, so that she does not catch a cold.

But she looks at him… and she’s  _ beaming.  _ There, at last, is a grin he recognizes; it is all pride, and smugness, and satisfaction. Sated ambition.

And this is more like her than even the gritty determination she had shown when learning to walk: this smug and cold victory that she earned for herself, all independence and recklessness, and the starlight above her snared by the grasping hands of the naked hawthorn tree. That's  _ her _ . That's Aredhel, in there, somewhere. Maybe she's buried very deep, but he's never been more certain that despite her trauma and the loss of her memory, somewhere within her, she remains.

She tries to convince him, as well as she can in her limited mime, to get him to join her on the roof; Asra refuses, if only because of the toll the cold has clearly taken on her body already. Asra leads her back inside, and she scowls all the while... and that, too, is familiar.

But after dinner he helps her into her shoes, two more sweaters, and a hat, and then they return. Her steps on the ladder are unsteady, but cautious, and confident despite their trembling. They remain on the roof late into the night, watching the stars. She falls asleep beside him in the hammock, her face pressed against Asra’s shoulder. It is the most peacefully she has slept since the summer.

  
  


Winter thaws into spring. The hawthorn’s branches bead with tight green buds. It is warm enough—and Aredhel is well enough—that Asra begins to take her out into the city.

How these outings warm him! She is timid only on their first excursion, clinging to his side like a fawn to its mother doe. Afterwards, she holds her chin high, her eyes eagerly drinking in the sights of the city around them, her fingers tangled loosely with Asra’s.

Asra swings their joined hands between their bodies. All the while, he speaks to her: he tells her who lives in the homes they pass, and names of the gods the priests sing of in their gilded temples. He points to the glowing windows of the shops that sell the best spices, the best silks, the best polished gems. Aredhel probably understands little of what Asra tells her—her grasp on language is still limited, and both stringing sentences and parsing them takes her some time—but he speaks slowly, and she smiles at him so warmly, and her stride is not only steady but  _ bouncing _ , as if she’s found a new rhythm in the streets of the city. The sun warms her face and she grows bold; she tightens the knot of her fingers around Asra’s and leads him through winding avenues and down tight alleys. He lets her; she crosses canals and turns corners as they amble across Vesuvia.

It is late afternoon—early evening, really—when her enthusiasm finally begins to flag. It is the longest she’s been out of the house, and though she seems to be hiding the exhaustion in her limbs, Asra still catches it. (Red embarrassment and frustration on her cheeks as she begins to half-trip over cobblestones, holding his hand a little tighter so that he might catch her before she falls full.) But they have strayed so far from the shop, Asra’s lost track of where they are. No matter—he can guide them back by the sun. He turns his face to the sky to orient himself, to plot them a course home.

Then, from the end of the street, laughter. Neighbors and friends meeting at the end of another day.

“Asra…?”

Aredhel’s voice is small and uncertain—afraid. Her feet slow to a stop, and the grip of her hand on Asra’s tightens. There’s a knot in her brow; her free hand, clenched in a fist, is trembling. She closes her eyes in concentration and whispers some unintelligible sound ( _ like the sounds the house makes _ ) of frustration under her breath, reaching for her words.

“Do we… come here already?”

How could they have? It is the farthest from the house Aredhel has come since her trauma. Even Asra himself does not recognize the streets. He passes a cursory glance at the buildings around them, blue in the light so near to dusk, the sun slanting through the streets. Asra squeezes her hand, reaches for her shoulder.

“No, Aredhel. We haven’t been here before.”

But Aredhel does not meet his eyes; her gaze skitters around the rooftops. Gnawing on her lip, she asks Asra, “...only me?”

Tavern-sounds from the end of the street; laughter, and the clink of glass on glass, and the off-pitch notes of a balalaika being tuned for a melody. That sound—familiar, faintly; where has Asra heard it?—Aredhel shudders to hear it. She frees herself from Asra’s grip and wraps her arms around her torso; her fingers pinch the lobe of her ear. “Aredhel? What is it?” But Aredhel only shakes her head, taking a step away from him.

“Familiar,” Aredhel says, fingertips slipping from ear to her temple, pressing hard. “It’s—”

It’s like she is a puppet, and all her strings have been cut at once.

Bleeding from the knees (scraped against the street) her shoulders heave with every breath she sucks between her clenched teeth. Her fingers burrow and scrape around the scar on her chest; it is not until Asra seizes tight to her wrist that she stops, leaving the flesh behind red and raw.

Back at the house, she whimpers and shudders. No matter how Asra tries to console her, she does not respond. She lies limp on the bed; if he does not mind her she tries, again and again, to wound herself.

‘ _ Albert, what can I do?’ _

—merry clap of single moisture droplet falling from bowing plaster to kitchen table; the ceiling, leaking, again.

Out on the roof the pool has come out of hiding, the bark of the budding hawthorn black from the brackish water, and the wind brushes the plants on its circumference (wafting smell of water mint) and disturbs the water’s surface, and the starlight (for it is night, now; it took Asra that long to shepherd Aredhel home, with her shuddering and lamenting all the way) tangles in its ripples. What can Asra do? He carries her to the hallowed waters and lays Aredhel’s body in its shallows, and he crawls in beside her and holds her until her trembling ceases and her breath steadies… and he looks out over the city then, dark in the night but for the distant glow of the temples and the docks to the south—

Asra realizes, then, where it was they had been; where Aredhel had led them, hands held, dragging him across the city.

_ “Only me?” _ she had asked, and she had been right; Asra himself had never visited Ilya’s old neighborhood.

  
  


The next day, when Asra takes his tea on the roof, the pool has vanished again; downstairs, Aredhel wakes, forgetful and helpless and confused, but thankfully neither as vacant nor unreachable as she was when Asra found her last summer. Again, he teaches her to walk; again, she breaks her silence, and slowly begins to speak.

And as spring warms into summer, Asra keeps a list of places  _ not _ to take her when they go out into the city—street corners where she’d trembled and begun to panic before Asra had recognized the signs of an oncoming relapse and led her away. A neglected garden of overgrown statues near the marketplace; a dockside on the lagoon; these are places, Asra gathers, that remind Aredhel of Ilya. 

That these memories can be triggered at all proves that her memories of her old life (of Albert and Brona, of the years before the plague, of Asra as her apprentice) live within her, somewhere… but any and all attempts Asra makes to bring her back to herself end in anguish, and breakdown, and relapse... and Asra sinking into the mud, into the pool on the roof, and Aredhel forgets, and all this begins all over again.

Eventually, Asra stops trying to make her into what she was. Perhaps it is for the best that she does not remember; they have all suffered enough.

Fragments of language spin into full sentences; her body strengthens to carry out her demands of it. But how uncanny it is, living alongside her! In some ways, she is no different: no matter how many times Asra has to teach her to walk, her gait is always the same, long sweeping strides at a steady quick clip. And yet in some ways she is nothing like what she was. She has become—perhaps through the process of her recovery—so much more patient. Quicker to laugh, and her amusement comes less frequently at her own expense, bereft of her old sense of self-deprivation.

How to account for it? Is this the way she might have been—lighter, softer—without the abuse of her father? The death of her aunt and uncle? Is it the absence of that trauma that has freed her, or has Asra—unwittingly, by caring for her as he has—molded her in his image, in some unsuspecting way? He cannot know—he tries not to think on it.

One day she comes home from the floating markets with a bolt of bright blue fabric, with the intention of making it into a pair of dresses for the both of them. Not grey, not black—bright blue. Asra nearly falls over.

She is so present, now. There is nothing holding her back: not her father, not her uncle… and not Ilya, either. For that matter, neither can Asra. She calls him ‘ _master_ ’ when he begins to reteach her the craft which she had first taught him—laughable. She takes to the spells and incantations with ease.

Why, even now—three years recovered—Asra is at his Gate, on his way to commune with the Magician, when he stares into the water of the oasis and finds her face—bright eyed, awed, curious—staring back from its depths.

“Aredhel?”

(And here it is, proof that he is no ‘master’ at all—he didn't teach her that. As far as Asra knows, it shouldn't even be possible for her to reach him here. And yet there she is, scrying for him across dimensions, across worlds—and Asra is so damnably  _ proud _ that he loses track, a little, of what she's saying, allowing himself this moment of victory [ _ once she was helpless; now look at how whole she is! _ ] before he begins to recognize the pattern of the leaves behind her. That is not the hawthorn tree she sits beneath, but a wizened old willow, at least two stories tall.)

(Asra knows that tree.)

“Aredhel, are you at the palace?”

Aredhel blinks, twists to take a closer look at the willow tree over her shoulder, then turns back to Asra. “Uhm, yes, master. I am.”

And then, the story comes: Nadia ( _ awake, at last! _ ) rapping on his front door as he escaped out the back, requesting a reading, inviting Aredhel to the palace, inquiring after her assistance. (Asra is so damnably proud.) And after she had left the shop—

“Ooh, and Asra, if you think  _ that’s _ wild, you’ll never guess who showed up next.”

What gives it away? Is it a cadence or a quivering in her voice? Or the way her eyes crinkle, a mix of mirth and curiosity? A trembling in her aura (only newly blossomed) or the way its color flashes? All of it, taken together, so familiar. As is Asra’s dread.

When Asra asks, “who else came to visit?” the nausea in his stomach and the cold fear clutching his heart tells him he already knows the answer.

“Doctor Devorak! He claimed to have known you, years ago.”

Aredhel snorts, amused. Then she lifts her head, and Asra can just barely make out the expression on her face… eyes gazing out into the palace gardens and not, for the first time since her image materialized in the clouded pool, at Asra himself.

“He's very conspicuous, for a wanted criminal,” Aredhel muses aloud, “wearing that oversized coat and that  _ mask, _ though there hasn't been a case of plague in the city for three years. And I don't know how he could have possibly crept in, because you've insisted  _ forever _ the house is hexed against those kinds of intrusions.”

But Asra thinks he knows. It means that, after all these years, Ilya’s absence and Aredhel’s recoveries and relapses,  _ all brought on by reminders of those days she spent with the doctor himself,  _ Ilya has held on to the key she cut for him.

(Asra feels so hopeless, and all the pride he had felt for Aredhel’s recovery jumps from him like a mis-shuffled deck of cards jumps from inexpert hands, scattered and fluttering to the ground. He only prays his fury and fear do not show plainly on his face.)

“Did he hurt you?”

“He didn’t really try,” Aredhel says, voice thick with conceit. “I hit him, y’know, pretty much immediately. One wonders how he managed to murder the Count at all when he has such poor defenses.”

“But how are you feeling?” Asra insists. “Are you having any headaches, or fainting spells? Any—”

“No nosebleeds, master,” Aredhel answers, rolling her eyes and favoring him with a smile that looks more patronizing than reassuring. “And if anything happens, I know what herbs to take.”

Faust slithers along her arm; Aredhel scratches the top of Asra’s familiar’s head. Her voice softens.

“I'll be alright, Asra. I promise.”

Asra is not so easily soothed; he knows what this portends: Nadia awake, and Ilya back in town… something is beginning. That  _ thing _ in the woods Muriel’s been warning him about.And Asra feels so woefully unready. Still he cannot piece together what happened in those days before and after Lucio’s death. Why is it that Ilya has returned, after all this time? Why is it that (by Aredhel’s account) he does not seem to recognize her any more than she recognizes him—that is to say, not at all?

(He does not make the mistake of hoping that—because of this missing memory—they will steer clear of each other.)

They are, all of them, about to be tested. Perhaps Aredhel most of all. How strong has he taught her to be? For years she had not even been able to visit Ilya’s side of town; how long can she possibly spend in his company before she shattered all over again? What if it happens before Asra is able to return to the city?

_ The one day you needed me most, and I wasn’t there. _

“Just be careful, Aredhel,” Asra tells her, frowning. “Especially with Doctor Devorak.”

Aredhel only grins at him, all pride and self-assurance and no caution, utterly unaware of what she is about to step (back) into:

“I'm a big girl, Asra. I can take care of myself.”

  
  
  
  


—————————— AREDHEL ——————————

  
  
  


 

Cinnamon. And nutmeg, from the baker’s stall, where she often goes with Asra. On each breeze: the salt of the sea, and incense from the vendors downwind: amber, juniper, myrrh. The meadowy smell of the flower stall. A treasure trove of expensive silks, wove in every color and pattern. Dates and nuts and dried fruits, piled in pyramids. Bronze scales to weigh them. Beneath the slatted wood that covers the canal of the marketplace, the sun sparkles on the seawater as bright as rheingold.

Laughter. Bartering. The clink of coin changing hands.

Then, above her—a flash of darkness, iridescent and black against the sun—the cry of a raven.

Early morning and the marketplace bustling, but  _ oh _ , how the crowd parts then! As wind-whipped trees on the coast the crowd sways and bends and between the bodies of vendors and shoppers and the stalls and the brightly colored lights Aredhel's eyes, at once, find  _ him _ : the doctor, the accused murderer, who had broken into her shop and asked her to tell his fortune.

A feeling like nimble fingers on harp strings—the pace of her heart quickens.

She is deer-fleet, or something like it; needing not even to shove. She weaves through the crowd like a colored thread in a tapestry and the crowd yields for her, gentle as a field of wildflowers, of tall and golden grass tickling her ankles; her feet pick a path short and sure.

_ Sea wind, on her face—the breeze of a cool night—stars— _

(Very quick humming like the stuttering of starlight. The way such light twinkles.)

Second raven-call. She, rooted as a tree, a nymph mid-transformation when, from across the market, his grey eyes lock with hers—

_ Sea spray on her bare shoulders—the relief of a cool breeze on brow damp with fever-sweat, and a thickness in the air like an oncoming storm. Warm chest, thundering heart; arms around her like a stone circle in a field. Familiar feeling of cloth against skin. Above her, weeping: _

_ “It is my fault, and I am sorry, I am so sorry—” _

—among the merry bounce of paper lanterns, and then he is before her, close enough to touch ( _ why does she so want to? _ ) the same look of wordless confusion on his face that she, too, feels, drawn here by some nameless impulse she is tempted to call destiny though she knows that is not its name—but beneath that disorientation…? Something…  _ else,  _ something….

Like the way the sun sparkles on the canal, only glimpses beneath the wooden slats, beautiful and near-blinding to behold.

Peeking out of his collar, past the silver trim of his uniform, she can see his pulse, a rapid fluttering in the white skin of his neck below his jaw ( _ sun leaking from behind the clouds, luminescent lining _ ) her fingertips reaching for the column of his throat. She knows his skin will be soft to the touch; he is hiding something in the beating of his heart. He had warned her, ‘ _ seek me out, _ ’ and  _ never _ , she thinks, has she welcomed an invitation so readily.

His throat bobs before her fingers brush skin. “Red—”

  
  
  


Bath water quivers, leaps—stirs, jasmine scent wafting—splashes on the ornate, painted tile of the bath chamber's floor as Aredhel starts awake. Gasping as if she's been running, her hands wiping sweat or bath water out of her eyes, coming away red _._

A low curse hissed under her breath. She washes her fingers clean before bringing them back to her upper lip, just below her nostril. Her forefinger taps gently at the skin… and when she draws her hand away, blood blossoms on the tips of her fingers.

“ _ Great. _ ”

Well,  _ gross,  _ is what it really is. Embarrassing, to boot. What is she—some adolescent in the throes of an ungainly, violent puberty? Usually she wakes bleeding from nightmares of snow-blanketed mountains and burning halls—not because she’s developing a  _ crush _ .

And that’s definitely what’s happening, incredible as it is. There’s no other explanation for it. It is not a dream of  _ past danger  _ that she has woken from, but danger  _ present _ , or danger she is likely to stumble into in the near future. All the more likely now that Asra’s skipped town, since Asra’s always been the one to caution her when she’s on the brink of doing something foolish.

This—dreaming of yesterday morning in the market, of running after the doctor, of catching him ( _ touching him! the sharp planes of his face, the curl of his smile, the notch of his throat, the sun in wait behind a cloud that will soon pass _ )—is most certainly foolish. As are the feelings of curiosity and attraction (compassion?) she can't help but feel for this near-stranger. But with any luck (if Aredhel possesses, say, even so much as a shred of self-preservation) she won’t get an opportunity to act upon it.

‘ _ The Countess probably going to hang him anyway,’  _ Aredhel thinks,  _ ‘whether or not I help her, and whether or not he is really guilty.’ _

But how long had she dozed off in the bath, to be visited by such dreams? She inspects her fingertips again—they're not wholly pruned, yet. Good; the Countess is waiting for her, and (as yet) Aredhel does not wish to make an enemy of her. Best, for the time, to be wary of her—and in the least, not to wear her patience thin. Aredhel had tested it already by requesting that Portia give her the time to bathe before she headed down to breakfast.

(Although the Countess alone is not sole cause of Aredhel’s caution: the night before, when she’d passed through the castle’s massive iron gates and over its arched bridge, across that imposing, eel-infested moat, she had been possessed of the terrible feeling that if she continued—crossed through those great doors and into the castle—she might never again find her way back out. A funny feeling. She wouldn't have given it much thought if Asra wasn't always going on about checking in with herself and trusting her intuition. Because—as illogical as it may be—her intuition had been screaming at her to run back through the iron gates and never cross them again.)

(What is beginning? If the Arcana knows, it does not care to tell her in a language she can understand. Like magic—which, she supposes, is exactly what it is—each time she seeks the advice of the cards it is the same one that leaps from the deck to her hand again and again:  _ death, death, death _ .)

(Or, as she had told the doctor:  _ change _ .)

(What is beginning? River-rush of friction and confluence, the alignment of events and moons, the swell of an orchestra. In three years she has become suspicious of coincidence—it is just a word for relationships not (yet) understood. The face of the moon darkened and bloodied—is that a coincidence? Seeing him in the market had felt like an eclipse, the blush of the moon in the shadow cast by the sun.)

Gingerly, Aredhel steps out of the tub, squeezing the excess moisture out of her hair and wrapping herself in a towel. Bare feet find the touch of the softest bath rug they've ever known, and her eyes skirt to the chair beside the door, where Portia has left her a new set of clothes: silk, cut in carnelian red, with sheer sleeves and artful embroidery.

Even folded, the garment looks fussy, and more ornate than anything Aredhel has ever been inclined to wear. She’s never been fond of wearing garments that draw attention to herself. But her old clothes have been taken away to be washed, and these new ones—however flashy—are clean. Resigned, Aredhel towels herself dry, and steps into the loose fitting pants and matching blouse.

But when she catches sight of herself in the mirror, she swears aloud for the second time that morning. Frowning at her reflection, she traces the exposed bone of her collar to the starburst scar that rests over her heart, plainly visible above the low cut of the blouse.

It isn't that she finds the blemish ugly—she supposes it is, in a way, almost pleasing to the eye—but she hates the vast black space of her memory that it represents, her sense of being not-quite-whole. For her, the scar has always marked her as incomplete.

She cannot recall the cause of the wound, and master Asra refuses to tell her how she acquired it. (He says he ‘ _ does not know, _ ’ but the way he averts his eyes betrays his lie.) She finds she cannot look at the scar for long without being overcome with an unpleasant feeling; even more unpleasant is the risk of Nadia asking about it. It is almost impossible to discuss with others without bringing up the fact that she can't recall more than the past three years of her life, or lying to cover that same fact. It is a weakness she would rather not discuss with the Countess at all.

Then again, formidable as she is, Nadia has already proven intelligent, suave, hospitable; it's not a far stretch to hope she'd have enough tact not to being the scar up, even if she did notice it.

Never mind—it is too late to change now. Anyway, Aredhel knows she is proud, but she is not vain; she will not allow something so trivial as a garment to upset her. She tears her eyes from the mirror and exits into the hall, where Portia is waiting.  
  
  


Asra tells her that he has been looking after her for three years.  _ Three years— _ a tremendous stretch of time to be coddled, to be incapable of caring for oneself. Aredhel intuits that she has spent the majority of the last three years in such a state: her memory of the time Asra has spent caring for her is patchy, like sunlight scattered through a thick canopy of leaves.

She can recall some things: frightened, clutching tight to Asra’s arm as he led her around the second floor; the first time she’d climbed to the roof on her own (and the first few times she’d tried, failed, and fallen off the ladder and onto her bony ass); Asra teaching her (or, as he says,  _ re- _ teaching her) the simplest of spells.

And she remembers this: a cold morning in winter, sitting beside the window, the image of the street below obscured by her breath fogging the glass. Unable to pull the impressions of the bodies and carts below into focus through that cloud, just abstract smears of color through the condensation... Aredhel had felt just as far away from her body, from herself.

Behind her, Asra was—what? Cleaning, cooking? How long had he been home from the market? (She couldn’t be sure, couldn’t say, time was… slippery, sometimes.)  _ Humming _ , in any case. Something in his voice so vibrant, and she was happy for him, so happy that  _ he _ was happy, since he rarely seemed happy (how much time did he spend, trying to hide his concern? He did not conceal it as well as he thought he did. How often had she caught him looking at her, frowning, worried?) as he had been burdened by the task of caring for her, but somehow—perfect storm—his brightness seemed only to prove how dark her darkness, and Aredhel, so far from her body, which often seems to her to be less-than-natural, or less-than-right. A clay vessel, emptied, collecting dust—and so, over his humming, she had called, asked him:

“Asra, do I have a soul?”

He had stopped humming at once.

She could not tear her eyes away from the blurred shapes beyond the window (or could, but for some inexplicable reason, could not bear to break her vigil) but she could hear Asra’s footsteps across the floor. His warm, soft hands covered her own, and he knelt at her side, peering up into her face.

“Of course you have a soul, Aredhel,” Asra said, as though such a thing was irrefutable. “Why would you even ask me that?”

“I don’t know.” She could not take her eyes away from the window, but she could see Asra—her caretaker, her master, the center of her life—in the periphery of her vision, and he looked so  _ wounded. _ He had been happy, humming so nicely, and she had shattered that joy, just as neatly as she’d shattered the glass she’d dropped last week when another headache had suddenly overcome her. “I don’t know.” She can hear her voice beginning to crack; she can feel her bottom lip beginning to quiver.

(She hates— _ hates _ —how Asra treats her as though she is a thing made of glass, a fragile bauble that would break at the slightest pressure… but she knows, deep down, that is precisely what she is. It is that truth she hates most of all.)

“It’s just—it’s more than just my memories, Asra,” she said, and his grip on her hands tightened—still gentle, but firm.

“Breathe,” he told her, and she did.

“I feel something is missing,” she managed, but through the tight clench of the anxiety and the fear and the anguish around her throat, the words came out as a hiss. “I feel… cavernous. A mountain full of dead mines, veins hollowed. There’s this…”

She closed her eyes, to better feel it. She had never had to describe it aloud before.

“This chasm,” she whispered, “that I feel I am always standing on the edge of. And it is a hungry, horrible thing, and I know it has taken so much of me already, and I fear that one day I will topple straight into it myself and there will be nothing left of me.”

In the darkness behind her eyelids, she felt all the more keenly the warmth of Asra’s hand as it came to cup her face.

“Aredhel.”

He called her name so softly and kindly that she was compelled to open her eyes and look at him; his purple eyes were serious and certain.

“Nothing like that is going to happen to you,” he told her, his gaze never once wavering from hers. “I won’t let it. I promise.”

Aredhel bit her lip; she wanted to believe him. But how can Asra save her from something within her?

“I feel as though I have been shattered,” she said, “and all my pieces stacked together perfectly enough for me to stand, but no glue in the cracks; I am just a great heap of broken porcelain, one sigh away from crumbling.”

Withholding written in every angle of his body, but she can make out his fear and doubt by the shadows on Asra’s face.

“Maybe you’re right,” Asra confessed. “Maybe one day, whatever it is—that darkness you’re talking about—maybe it will reach for you. But one day, when it does… I believe you’ll be strong enough to endure it.” He favored her with a warm smile, and dropped his hand to take both of hers in his. “You have no idea how strong you are. I know things seem rough now. Maybe they will for awhile. But I don’t think they will, always. I believe in you.”

“When it comes, you will be ready.”

  
  


Is she—ready? That thing, it is coming—it is right on her heels—and Asra is nowhere to be found.

Racing past tall hedges, topiaires, marble fountains; all of it is unfamiliar to her, so why does the sight of it  fill her with a dark and primal dread? The pace of her breath, accelerating; a weight on her chest like being in the grip of an old nightmare. An impossible truth, but she is sure of it, now—she has been here before. In these gardens, anyway, if not the interior of the palace itself. It explains the feeling she’d had on the bridge last night with Portia. She cannot say when, or what she endured in the garden labyrinth, but she knows (from Asra’s repeated cautioning) this feeling of mixed  _ deja vu _ and panic:

It always happens when she’s close to remembering something she shouldn’t, and it always sends her relapsing into her old helplessness.

She cannot— _ cannot— _ afford that kind of setback now.

‘ _ I’m a big girl, Asra. I can take care of myself _ .’ Haha. Yeah, right.

Oh, she  _ knew _ to be wary of Nadia. No, Aredhel does not blame the Countess directly for the terror she has been thrown into, but Her Highness  _ did _ manage to steal one of Asra’s Arcana right from under Aredhel’s nose, and she has no idea if the Countess has any intention of returning the card, whether or not Aredhel succeeds in this test of her abilities.

(Then again—is this a greater indication of the Countess’s cleverness, or Aredhel’s foolishness? She had been so  _ careless _ at breakfast, preoccupied with her dream [ _ the elegant part of his lips, his throat jumping, “Red,” her harpstring heart _ ] when she should have been watching Nadia more carefully.)

But she is sure of it, now—she has been here before. Over the perfume of the gardens she can smell smoke and evergreen—hear the howl of a wind in the mountains—and these, she knows from experience, are warning signs. Well, bless Asra for his foresight: at least Faust is around here, somewhere. If Aredhel does succumb (as she most certainly will, now that the phantom smells have returned) perhaps her master’s familiar will be able to let him know that she’s collapsed, twitching and inarticulate and useless, in the midst of trying to prove herself to someone she’s not entirely certain she wishes to work for anyway.

And then, cutting through all that dread, lightning across a night sky: a small service door in the lemonstone wall, nearly covered with ivy. And that, too, she recognizes! She knows (without knowing how she knows) where it leads; she knows the door for what it is:

Escape. Freedom. Safety.

It is not worth risking her recovery—her hard earned-progress—for the sake of a card, even from the Arcana. Asra would not ask her to do so. Of that much she is certain, and that makes up her mind for her.

The bang of the door upon the stone like the peal of a victory bell… followed soon the braying of the late Count’s hounds. But Aredhel  _ flees _ , runs so fast that soon even the clamoring of the dogs is not so loud as the crickets which sing in the tall and golden grass that tickles her ankles and her midriff as she speeds down the hill and back into the city. Roots rise to trip her; brambles grasp at the silk and snag at the intricate embroidery of her new clothes. But she is sure footed and certain and she flies down the hill, as far from the palace as her feet will carry her. She runs, and she runs—

[ _ tugged, drawn... led, perhaps by some unquantifiable and highly improbable thing: that she was reaching for him even then, from the castle grounds; that her magic took her feet down the most direct and expeditious path {to starlight to the sea to his arms after years ‘as surely as a river’} to be beside him _ ]

—nearly into a wooden door. It swings open out of nowhere, releasing into the night the smells of tobacco and ale, and the sounds of raucous laughter. Aredhel manages to swerve just in time to avoid collision with the door, only to find herself sprawled on the cobblestones a moment later, flat on her ass.

(By now, a familiar feeling. But not what comes next:)

Gloved leather and a strong grip on her bicep, her bare shoulder, “Come now, young lady, I’ve got you—upsy daisy—”

...She recognizes that voice.

And—weirdly, stupidly,  _ infuriatingly— _ when his hands come to her arms to lift her from the ground, all that panic (clammy, fever-like, and the garden maze had too many places to hide: what waits, in the grass? What is that hissing? [ _ scent of horse, leather tack, polish and manure and sweat {her own?} _ ] and cold, cold, her hands are  _ freezing _ —all the air she breathes feels thin and cold and it makes her chest feel tight. Lucio’s dogs, on the hunt [ _ again? _ ] as she’d run down the hill, heart pounding, on the verge of weeping in frustration: ‘ _ will I always be so infuriatingly fragile? In no condition to help the Countess with anything; in no fit state to stop her. Can’t help him [if help is needed {and of course it is,  _ look _ at him} in his current predicament] if he is innocent but that—isn’t that—yes, I know it to be true: can’t-help couldn’t-help never-saved  _ **_anyone—_ ** _ ’ _ ) quiets... until the only emptiness she feels is a peaceful silence.

(A coincidence. An eclipse.)

_ {to starlight to the sea to his arms after years} _

  
  


When Aredhel had pursued him in the market, the doctor had fled; here, after he lifts her to her feet, he offers her a drink. And no, she does not miss the way his eyes take in the low cut of the outfit Nadia had gifted her, nor the blush that rises in his cheeks, which stirs something warm and unwise within her in return. It would be reckless, she thinks, to accept his invitation—just the kind of thing Asra would have cautioned her against. ‘ _ Be careful Aredhel, especially with Doctor Devorak. _ ’ But his smile is warm, and sincere, she thinks, so she agrees.

The Countess had called him ‘the  _ murderous  _ Doctor Devorak _ ,’  _ but he doesn’t seem that way to her. Nadia’s authority is no match for Aredhel’s mixed pride and rebellion; she’s arrogant enough to believe her intuition as worthy as any evidence the Countess has thus far produced. Whatever he was, whatever he did ( _ or did not do _ ), Aredhel looks at Julian and trusts he has no intention of harming her.

(Julian—that is what he calls himself. Real or imagined—that in making the shape of his name, her mouth always turns upwards in a smile to sound forth those last letters? Every time she says his name, she grins.)

Indeed, as he greets old friends and jokes with the bartender, Julian strikes Aredhel not as a villain so much as an actor trying to play one in a performance. Even in the shop, he had really only been  _ theatrical _ , a play-act kind of menacing, an imitation of the real thing.

But still this faint fear, for him if not for herself: Aredhel has fled the palace; she has abandoned the Countess’s game without so much as a farewell. Is it such a stretch, to fear the guards have been sent for her? Has she not just exhibited the same insolence that had so inflamed Nadia towards the guards at the gate? And how competent are they? If she has led the guards here, if they have followed her, if she has put Julian in danger… but  _ why _ is he even out in public to begin with? When he returns to the table, glasses in hand, the words tumble out of her before he’s settled in his chair:

“You know they intend to hang you, don't you?”

Julian regards her with dark amusement, sliding her glass across the table. “Yes, I'm sure they will certainly try,” he states, matter-of-fairly, tapping his fingers on the sweating glass of his tankard. “And succeed, probably.”

“That possibility doesn't seem to weigh on you terribly.”

(Why is it, then, that it weighs on her?)

“They haven't caught me yet, have they?” Julian asks, with a devilish grin. He folds his arms and leans towards her across the table, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “In fact, come to think of it, why aren't I being arrested right now? All evidence points to you having come directly from the palace—down the hills, out a certain garden gate, perhaps?” he asks, plucking a golden bramble from her clothes. “One might think you were in the Countess’s employ.”

As he says it Julian has the  _ cheekiest _ look in his eye, like he’s daring her to arrest him. Or daring  _ something. _ Curl of some suggestion, delicious indecence in his smile. Cinnamon, seaspray; trembling, stuttering starlight—Aredhel thinks of the dream, the phantom touch of her fingers on his throat. And then, she can no longer look at him; his gaze, single-eyed as it is, is so intense, so  _ audacious _ , that she cannot bear to hold it and think of touching him at the same time.

(She cannot recall ever having felt this  _ girlish  _ before.)

Instead, her eyes dart between Julian’s face and the rim of her glass. “I’m not in anyone’s employ,” Aredhel replies, as cool as she can, taking a sip of the fizzy, herbal draught to ease her nerves. Dryly, she adds, “The Countess and I have yet to successfully negotiate my fee.”

Julian laughs—a beautiful, hideous bark of a laugh. Aredhel loves it. (It is the first thing about him that she loves. Oh, first of many; once that list is begun it will only swell. ‘ _ Be careful _ ,’ Asra had warned her, but she is the opposite of cautious: too trusting, reckless.)

“Is that so?” Julian asks, easing back into his chair. “I’m curious, what’s my head worth, to the Countess?” Then he tilts his head to the side and grins. “And you said ‘negotiating’—so for that matter, what’s it worth to you? Gold? Jewels? A position in the court?”

It is an ugly thought, that she could be bought: that any amount of money would make the idea of being complicit in his death seem, somehow, agreeable. Aredhel’s eyes break from his, falling instead to the fizzing green drink in her glass.

“For now, I'd prefer your head remain attached to the rest of your body.”

In the periphery of her vision she can just make out the quizzical look Julian gives her. He crosses his legs, ankle-over-knee, one leg bouncing the other. “Well, you have my blessing to hold out as long as you need to fetch a fair price for your trouble.”

Then  he shakes off his unease and plants an elbow on the table, rests cheek on palm; teeth catch lip and he favors her with a charming smile. (The color of his eye is the warm grey of a cloud that cloaks the sun.)

“In the meantime you’re welcome to practice chasing me, if you like,” Julian tells her, his voice both jovial and sultry. His gaze lingers overlong on her motionless lips when he adds, “And I am not as wealthy as the Countess, but perhaps between the two of us, we also might negotiate a way for me to reward you, should you catch me.”

What a deflection is that! And he nearly succeeds in diverting her attention entirely. She does not miss the suggestive lilt in his voice, his sudden proximity as intoxication as the drink. Close enough to kiss. Scent of ale on his breath, the white flash of his teeth—temptation is written in all of his details. Pulsepoint in his neck—she thinks she could sink her teeth into it, and Julian would only urge her closer. ‘ _ Be careful, Aredhel, especially with Doctor Devorak.’ _ Already she’s thinking of kissing him and by the look on Julian’s face he’s thinking the same.

Just another in a long list of Asra’s warnings she's never heeded. One of which—now that she thinks of it—was also to never to come to this part of town. Yet she feels in far less danger here than she had at the palace.

In the end, she can ignore Asra’s warnings; what she cannot ignore is the sight of Julian’s aura as he leans across the table towards her. It is the first time Aredhel has really looked at it, and in the silence between them with his body so close to hers, it pulls her attention.

Mess of a soul: all gutted and shredded, a tapestry torn to pieces. ‘ _ Who did this to you _ ?’ A history of unkindnesses done upon him; many of those unkindnesses courted deliberately, she thinks. Pain, much of it self-inflicted. ‘ _ Why has no one ever pried his hands off the knife of his guilt? _ ’ Empty and lonely and hollow in a way Aredhel recognizes. Julian does not strike her as a villain so much as someone pretending to be one; worse, beneath all that charm and suggestion she sees the same torment of unanswered questions that tear at her. (After all these years she no longer believes in coincidence.) And it moves the aching absence within her, to see herself reflected thusly. ‘ _ Whatever has passed is past _ ; _ if we do not write the stories of our lives, we let others tell them for us.’  _ She is done waiting; she is done with caution. And if she cannot help herself—and heaven knows, after three years, she most certainly can't—maybe she can help him.

(For him, she will become.)

She wants, so badly, to touch him; she almost does. To reach for his hands, gently… she guesses that he has rarely been touched gently. Instead her fingers flutter restlessly on her glass, but when raises her eyes to meet his she holds it, tells him with all the soft and deadly seriousness of a promise:

“I have no intention of collecting a bounty on an innocent man, Julian. No matter how high the prize.”

How abruptly his charisma cracks, then! Gone the villainous, self-deprecating facade; his eye is wide and looking at her with a heartbreaking mix of despair and wild hope. But it is his aura, not this glance, that wrests the air from her lungs. It is fluttering, fitful, like light playing on a frothing river, and the glitter of gold sunk underwater past mud and reeds so deep the light can barely reach it.

In a flash, it is gone. He withdraws—or perhaps ‘ _ recoils _ ’ is a better way to describe it, his aura retracting and dulling into something grey and unreadable. His back straightens; he sits up in his chair and gawks at her until his surprise transforms to disbelief, then derision.

“Ha! I’m sorry, I must have misheard—did you just imply I was innocent?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest. “Who put that idea in your head? You know, most of the city is certain of my guilt. You couldn’t—you haven’t any evidence to the contrary,” he concludes, weakly, raising an eyebrow as his gaze skirts to his shoes.

In a voice so soft she can barely hear it over the din of the tavern (might have missed it, had she not seen his lips shape the words) he asks her, “...do you?” 

There is nothing but broken faith in his eye when it finds her again.

Aredhel cannot bring herself to say ‘ _ no. _ ’ The temptation to touch him almost too loud to refuse.

“Not yet,” she admits, “but neither do I have any compelling evidence that you  _ did _ do it, only second hand and half-forgotten accounts of what happened that night.” The temptation to touch… at last her fingers lift off from the glass. She reaches for his cheek, but never makes landing. Instead, her fingers thread in the dull light of his aura. “I don’t think even  _ you  _ know for certain whether or not you did it.”

Trick of the light: his cheek looks like it is leaning towards the touch of her palm. But then Julian retreats from her, crossing not only arms but legs too, now, one big knot of limbs. He lifts his tankard to his mouth and takes a considerable swig, and the glass rings empty when it meets the table again.

“That’s a very good magic trick, Aredhel, but that is all it is: a trick.” His expression sours, but he cannot meet her eyes. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

She's about to protest—loudly, with plenty of vulgar language (she does not take kindly to being called a fraud)—when the raven flies through the open window, piercing the din with high pitched, guttural shrieks. ( _ mint-scent, heart rending— _ ) Julian curses under his breath, throwing back his chair and rising to his feet as all the tavern patrons make for the doors. Playing cards scatter in the air; the barkeep is shouting. Above, the raven beats its wings against a strand of bells.

‘ _ You don’t know the first thing about me _ ,’ he insisted; and yet, in all this cacophony, in the midst of danger, he reaches for  _ her _ .

( _ Warm chest, thundering heart; arms around her like a stone circle in a field. _ )

  
  


Asra tells her that he has been looking after her for three years.  _ Three years— _ three years of pocked memories, a battle waged against a nameless and faceless grief, days spent rooted to the bedroom window. All of it like a terrible tide: recovery and relapse, pulling her in and out, pulling her to pieces. A cycle as reliable (if not so regular) as the succession of moons.

Now, something is changed.

Unbidden and as yet unknowable something has crept into all those empty spaces within her; if she is a mountain full of mines, they have been veined to bursting with gold. That vast dark space within her is no longer dark but glittering, and if it still whispers of hunger and danger, she no longer heeds it.

What is she allowing herself to fall into? Everything that Asra has always taught her, urged her—patience, caution, strength, self-preservation—all of it calls upon her to withdraw from this., to return to the shop. To be good, to be responsible, to await her master’s return. But Aredhel knows she cannot do any of these things.

Perhaps all this time she has spent in recovery, she has, in a way been coddled; she has failed often enough to be safe in the knowledge that if she fails again, Asra will rescue her. Miserable, but comfortable. Now Julian has come into her life like the sun through an opened window. Perhaps all the while, she just needed a reason to be strong; he gives her one.

_ ‘I will not leave you without allegiance, without help, without hope. Let the Countess promise me all those things you thought would tempt me: wealth, beauty, power. None are as tempting as the look in your eyes when I told you I believed in you. You will not be alone; I will help you. Together we will find out if you are deserving of the punishment you are so keen to throw yourself into. _ ’

And if this endeavor breaks her, as she has broken already more times than she can count? Sink or swim! What could be more deserving of such high stakes than the life of an innocent man? She will lead his neck out of the noose.

Aredhel cannot know what she  _ was _ , but what greater test to learn who she  _ is _ , or who she might yet become, than the one before her? These are the kinds of tales, she thinks, that build a person. Risk or reward, she will stand beside him; perhaps, in helping Julian find his answers, she will find some of her own.

She runs, and she runs, down the roads Julian gave her:  _ left, right, sharp right, round street. _ She runs until she can’t, not because of exhaustion but because she cannot catch her breath for her laughing. Here she is:  _ whole, at last _ ! All of her fluttering, united in great trembling and anticipation of the days before her, like a great oak tree caught in a gale. How resolved her conviction! Outside that white and hollowed mountain—hallowed monument to her grand forgetfulness—it is  _ spring. _ She has come out of her cold cloister of misery and backwards glances and the world is green again and full of promise.

_ “Asra, do I have a soul?” _

Now, something quickened. In all that empty space, the bright glimmer of a certain truth:  _ ‘I am going to see him again. I will not leave him alone.’ _ Thrice already in as many days fate has brought them together; sure as the sunrise, it will bring them into collision once again. Next time she will smile to see him; she will smile in the act of greeting him by name. She repeats it like a cherished secret—“ _ Julian” _ —and her lips curve in delight at the feel of his name upon them.

_ “When it comes, you will be ready. I promise.” _

For the first time that she can remember, Aredhel believes she might be.

  
  
  
  


—————————— JULIAN ——————————

  
  
  
  


After three years away, Julian Devorak had returned to Vesuvia to die.

If you had asked him before he had become a fugitive—if the question was hypothetical—he would have told you he was born to run. After all, that was more or less what he had done throughout his early adulthood: from Nevivon to Prakra, and then onward, to Drakr and Hjallnir. Once, after his time as a field surgeon on the frontlines of the southern wars, he had ventured even as far as Chandalar. From place to place he had bounced across the globe, never lingering in one town for long, never settling enough for any of those places to begin to feel like a home.

That was, until he had heard of the latest outbreak of the Red Plague—the very same mysterious illness he had studied under Doctor Satrinava—and caught the next boat to Vesuvia.

But Julian is no longer the man he was when he set out from Nevivon to find an apprenticeship and study medicine; running from the hangman’s noose turns out to be very different from those idyllic years of his youth. For three years, guilt and shame have gnawed away at him as winter cracks a bone. What sins has he committed that are so terrible he cannot bear to recall them? Every time that he comes close, the headaches overtake him; and anyway, he’s not sure he  _ really _ wants to know. The black unknowable inside him (as black as the ink that marks his hand, the hand he hides, the stain that names him  _ ‘murderer’ _ ) horrifies him, and it follows him wherever he goes. How many times does he criss-cross the sea, trying to shake it? But never is he free of it; the guilt hangs like a chain of iron around his neck.

He is a stranger to himself, and he can no longer endure it. When he had come back to himself (where his memory resumes) speeding away from Vesuvia’s city limits with the same speed a guilty man surely would, he had looked at his hand and seen the mark placed upon it… and even then, Julian had not known the answer to the essential question.  _ What kind of a man is he? _ He had left his home so long ago to save lives, not to take them. It cannot be true; what could move him to such violence?

He runs, and he runs… and slowly from out of the vacant spaces in his memory comes creeping the shame, and the guilt, and Julian begins to doubt. Time does not fade the ink on his hand. Time wears only at his confidence in his innocence, as patiently and persistently as the sea devours the shore.

And how to confront—to _kill_ , if he is capable of it—such shame? How to smother it? He cannot absolve himself of a sin he cannot name. And any and all attempts to _remember_ , to delve deep into that dark chasm of horror and drag forth his recollections, end not only in failure but pain: head-splitting aches. Night terrors. How, then, to drown it?

Well, Julian’s always maintained a dangerous romance with his own self-destruction.  _ That _ much he knows to be true, no matter what happened to him Vesuvia.

Only, early on, he’d learned that such self-destruction did not yield the same familiar, predictable results. Now, when he wounds himself—when he picks a fight he can’t win, or splits his own skin in drunken clumsiness—his throat glows with a mark of dark magic, and before his eyes his body repairs itself.

It had made him giddy; it had made him hysteric. He had flung himself into the teeth of more and more dangerous situations, giving that ‘ _ kick me, cut me, fuck me, break me’ _ look to nearly everyone he met. How far, he wondered, could he push such magic? How much violence could his skin withstand?

‘ _ Kick me, cut me, fuck me, break me; somewhere in that hollow blackness within me there must be a reason I deserve it.’ _

A monstrosity, that’s what he was. Except for this one saving grace: his indestructibility is not his alone. He can share it. With no more than a touch he can absorb the wounds of others unto himself, and make them his burden to bear: another, more worthy use of his indefatigable body.

Of course, it is a body still capable of feeling pain. And so this healing feels like penance: he knows not what terrible thing he has done in the past, but he knows one way to atone for it. Is it self-flagellation, or contrition? At the risk of, or  _ because _ of, the agony such antics often inflict upon him?

That’s the rub with Asra’s “gift”: he can remember that Asra gave it to him, but he cannot, for the life of him, remember  _ why _ . Did Julian himself ask for such a thing? If so, what could have possibly moved him to desire it? Or had the magician simply bestowed it upon him for his own reasons?

...did Asra know what Julian had already done, or planned to do, or would one day be accused of doing? All-knowing, too-clever magician: he must have, mustn't he? And, if so—had Asra marked Julian with this magic to punish, or protect him?

In the end three years of self-destruction fail, utterly, to destroy; nothing stands up his curse, nor to that great swath of eradicated memory within him. It is a hungry thing that growls, that lies in weight; the great sin (for what else could this guilt be persecuting him but some great and terrible sin?) that lies in the past he cannot bear to remember, the one that gives him night terrors. But Asra—Asra, Magician of Vesuvia, proprietor of Mooney’s Apothecary—Asra may remember.

(Of course, it is not  _ really _ Asra the Magician that pulls Julian Devorak back to Vesuvia; this riptide is something different. What calls him back to the town where he is doomed to hang? He knows not what to call it, a voice crooning a siren song out of that maw of darkness. For lack of a better word, he sometimes calls it ‘ _ destiny. _ ’)

No way of knowing how long it will take word of his arrival to spread to the palace, but Julian is slippery. He’s pretty sure, anyway, that he can make it from the edges of the city to Asra’s shop without being noticed. But if, instead, the palace guards find him, and march him to his execution? Well, perhaps that would not be such a terrible thing, either.

(He walks into a trap; he marches to the gallows. Never certain himself: does he crave death because he feels he is deserving of it, or because he is no longer sure he will ever taste it?)

He is a stranger to himself, and he can no longer endure it. He has tried, for three years, to escape it; he has failed every time. There is naught but futility in running from his past; it has followed him as doggedly as his shadow. If there is relief from this pain to be found, it must be in Vesuvia. And is it not a dark and wonderful coincidence? Julian must return into the place in which he will be in the greatest peril if he hopes to escape his greatest burden. It is, in a way, fitting. To Vesuvia, then; to whatever end.

But first—under cover of nightfall—to Mazelinka’s.

(If he has come here to die, he owes it to her to bless her with his face—still capable of smiling and not twisted into a grim mask of death—before he does so.)

She had not been home, and her door had been locked; he had crept, carefully as he could, through her opened window. Then, he was overcome by how warm it had felt to be back there, where so little had changed. He remembered the dinners he’d shared with Mazelinka, swapping pirate stories and memories of Nevivon. She’d been so kind to him, then… Julian had hoped she would still think of him kindly, now that he had shown up in her kitchen as a fugitive. He hoped he had not unwitting brought danger to her doorstep; he had been careful, for once, when he had come there. He crossed the kitchen floor, stamped twice on the rug a few feet from the hearth—a hollow sound greeted him. She still had the hiding hole. Good, that may yet come in handy—

Thud of market-spoils hitting the floor. Incredulous whisper: “ _ Ilyushka _ ?”

He had turned towards the door, to the sound of her voice, not nearly so gruff as he remembers when she whispered his name. She stood, frozen on the doorstep, eyes wide (glassy?) but then she had not even bothered to close the door before she had pulled him into a crushing hug, her arms tight around his waist, her face pressed to his chest.

“Ilyushka,” she repeated, and sighed. “What are you doing back here, you foolish boy?”

And what was he supposed to tell her? That he had spent the last three years fleeing, fighting or fucking as many people as he could? That the guilt within him made him want to be crushed, winked out of existence, his suffering ( _ at last! _ ) at an end? That he had come back to Vesuvia to die?

No, he could not tell her that. So when she asked him, he lied.

“To see you, of course,  _ baboushka, _ ” he grinned, dipping his head to kiss her on the cheek. “Why, you look as lovely as ever.”

  
  


Julian Devorak had come to Vesuvia to die; but, if possible, he’d first  _ very _ much like a word with Asra the Magician. Metal thrill-seeking taste at the back of his throat as he crosses the city to Mooney’s Apothecary; the guards are not looking for him,  _ yet _ , but he feels so close to danger ( _ real _ danger, the kind that Asra’s magic will not protect him from) on Vesuvia’s streets, and it lights all of him up humming as he crosses canals and dark alleys to the shop where Asra practices.

When he arrives, however, Asra is nowhere to be found; at Mooney’s Apothecary, Julian meets someone else entirely.

She’s a feisty little thing, this young woman that Asra has taken as his apprentice. She'd gotten the better of him! More astonishing still, she'd recognized him—knew the crime he stood accused of—and still she'd followed him to the door on his way out and tried to force answers out of him with a knife to his neck.   
  
Of course, by then, she was no longer in possession of said knife. She'd made the mistake of brandishing it earlier; it had been all too easy for Julian to pluck it out of her pocket in the card room, during her reading.   
  
But oh, the look of surprise on her face! Pure wonder at his sleight-of-hand, when he produced the same knife in front of her later, once she'd found her pockets to be empty. And then, the look of reproach she'd given him as she'd taken it back... but there had been the hint of the provocative in it, too, despite that disapproval.

It was  _ delightful _ . And probably, in the long run, and despite the brandished weapons, a much more pleasant encounter than the one Julian knows he is destined to have with her master.

But the thought of her face—! It left Julian laughing lightly to himself all the way back to Mazelinka's. Her wide eyes, her incredulous smile…. Oh, but he  _ does _ worry for her. Apprenticed with Asra, but she seems not to have the slightest idea of what the magician is capable of. Stupidly, despite the reasons Julian knows it is not in his power to do so, he feels an urge to protect her. At the very least he should warn her...

...but then again he suspects such a ‘ _ warning _ ’ would merely be a thinly-veiled excuse to see her again. He is a stranger to himself, but he knows this much: his the motivations behind his desire to see her are not entirely virtuous. He has always done this;  _ pushed. _ If he is wise, Julian will let it be what it was: a chance encounter, nothing more; not to be repeated.

However, once he arrives at Mazelinka’s, and curls into the cushioned refuge beneath the floorboards, and pulls the cover over it and falls asleep—then, the nightmares come.

(As they do, these days.)

He can never remember just what it is he dreams. All Julian knows is that he wakes shouting, sweating and trembling like he's been running, again, with an ache in his head like his skull is cleaving in two.

( _ phantom pain in fists: splintered, but the door won’t yield, and already too hoarse from shouting _ )

He's only been back in Vesuvia less than forty eight hours, though; this is the first time that's it's happened at Mazelinka’s. And it must have been a bad one, because Mazelinka is already awake. Above him, her hands rap on the floor.

“Ilyushka? Are you alright?”

He pants, he shakes, he lies to her: “I'm fine, Mazelinka. It was just a dream.”   
  
  
  


 

And so, for the rest of that night—lying in the hiding hole, snatches of half-remembered fears taunting him into wakefulness as soon as he begins to drift back to sleep—and into the following morning, Julian resolves not to think of Asra’s apprentice. It is not so hard. He does not even know her name; she is a near-stranger. He tries very hard to convince himself that he can barely recall the features of her face.

(Could not even make out the color of her eyes in the dim shop light.)

[ _ Green. They were green. _ ]

Of course, he has no reason to believe the night terrors have anything to do with Asra’s apprentice. No  _ good _ reason, anyway; there was nothing about her to explain why he had woken in the night with a feeling like someone was kneeling on his chest and squeezing, like he was suffocating, like he couldn’t breathe at all. But he’s a neurotic, if he wasn’t before; his anxiety encourages his paranoia. The night terrors last night had been more vivid and frightening than they had been in some weeks now; after he had resolved to return to this city, they had lessened somewhat in intensity, if not in frequency. Perhaps it is just overdue, connected more to his arrival than his encounter with the shopkeep… that would certainly make more sense. But Julian isn’t so sure. 

Perhaps, in the end, he had it wrong. Perhaps apprentice needed no protection from her master, because she was (in some well-concealed way)  _ just as _ dangerous.

(To him, at least.)

That’s the feeling, anyway, that gripped him, when he found her the next day in the Marketplace. He’d been wandering between the stalls—their colors and music and fragrance doing little to soothe the dull and persistent ache he’d woken to between his eyes—when he’d seen her. Not just shopping,  _ no— _ barreling towards him, full stop, a look of the utmost determination on her face. Seized by terror and dread, the cold non-memory of his nightmares ( _ frenzy-whipped sea, burned stench _ ) still close upon him, he had not stopped to think; he had turn, and he had ran.

Between leaving her shop and sneaking to the Marketplace, Julian had given chase to the palace guards more than once already; already, the familiar routine of running for his life. All well and good. After all, Julian Devorak has returned to Vesuvia to die; there is not really so much at stake, if he is caught. It’s just a game. He runs, and he runs—but he can’t run forever. One day he knows he’ll be caught. Sometimes, he hopes for it.

...why did he hope, then, with equal fervor (that morning, running from her in the Marketplace, her face [ _ her eyes, lovely, green _ ] just as he’d remembered) that  _ her _ hands would catch him?

( _ Do I want her because I believe she will destroy me? Or does a part of me hope she might save me? As if I could be saved. No, not even magic can help me now, and I would refuse the help of those shadowy arts, anyway. _ )

They didn’t. Julian left the market unimpeded; when he began the walk back to Mazelinka’s, he went unfollowed, both by the apprentice and the palace guards alike.

  
  


Of course, Julian Devorak has no reason to believe the night terrors—persistent as they have become—have anything to do with Asra’s apprentice, nor the panic they leave him with in the morning. No  _ good _ reason, anyway; but he does begin to hope. Such terror and dread, to behold her; is she as dangerous as the witch who taught her? It makes it  _ almost  _ acceptable for him to want to see her again: he can pretend he desires her company not because of her loveliness nor her fierceness, but because (and this is not pretend) Julian has always craved the kiss of a sharp thing to cut himself upon. He has come to Vesuvia, after all, to die. What's the harm, then, in bloodying and bruising himself on this dark enigma, the beast growling in wait in the dark pools of her eyes?

‘ _ Kick me, cut me, fuck me, break me.’  _ She’s got a look in her eyes that could level a city, and he wants to be wrecked. This is what he tells himself: he longs for her likes he longs for his own ending, a smothering oblivion to free him, at last, from his forgotten past and his guilt alike.

But if that is true (if those are his motives) why, then, when he finds her in the south end—sprawled in the back alley behind the only tavern in the city in which Julian can safely show his face—is he overcome with a feeling not of masochistic delight (which would be familiar) but something far more overwhelming? 

(Something far too close to  _ tender. _ )

A part of him can’t help but wonder if she’s following him on purpose. Thrice in as many days—perhaps Asra had put her up to it, to keep an eye on him, if Asra is still too cowardly to face Julian himself. Or perhaps Asra—all-knowing, too-clever—had sent his apprentice to merely distract him, so that the magician himself could slip away… in which case ( _ congratulations! _ ) Asra has succeeded spectacularly.

Oh, but she  _ is _ lovely, really. Whether or not Julian—who is as good as a dead man—has any right to be noticing such things.

In the alley, vast sweep of emotion: first, her flesh. Much more of it bared to the caress of the night than when he’d last seen her. Elegant shelf of the bones of her collar; pale, blue-veined wrists. Slice of bare stomach between trouser and top. Hardly lewd—the cut of the garment is tasteful, not tacky, and the embroidery along the hems is very fine work—but still Julian can feel himself turning the same shade as the silk to behold her. Tight throat inhibits swallowing, speaking. And trying, then, not to gape at the sight of her quite so audibly; gaze pulling away from skin but catching summer gold in the corners—he reaches forward with leather-clad fingers—and yes, there, on the sleeve of her dress, a sharp-spined golden bramble; Julian remembers that. Fleeing from imprisonment, from execution (as if fleeing had solved anything in the end; he’d only come back) down the overgrown slopes of the hills behind the palace walls. The route has torn at the silk, leaving her rough-looking and wild.  _ Dangerous _ , yes—possibly.

She looks like a dream, like the sweetest kind of annihilation.

In the end, though, she does not break him quite the way he expects. In front of the whole tavern, she shatters him:

_ “I don’t think even  _ you _ know for certain whether or not you did it.” _

  
  


Julian Devorak has returned to Vesuvia to die, after three years of trying and failing to do precisely that. From Aransia to Iouernia, he has been throwing himself headfirst into more and more perilous circumstances. He’s leapt without certainty of landing into bar fights and risky fucks, testing his new and strange skin which endures all rending. Then he’d thrown himself into a city of which he was a public enemy, an “enemy of the people” as the wanted posters read, yes, he returned to this place and thrust his neck through the hangman’s noose, and the thought filled him with delight and dread both. Giddy, hysteric; everywhere he goes, he can feel the touch of that rope tightening.

But the light in the Rowdy Raven is golden and soft, and in her eyes there is a different kind of danger. It speaks of soft havens, warm arms; seductive, impossible things—not annihilation, but its antithesis. He does not know how to respond to such a look; his heart flutters with a different kind of fright. A fear of winning things undeserved, a trust he will repay with only betrayal. She has a look in her eyes that could wreck a city, but when she looks at him here—healthy drink blush in her cheeks, lips glistening, parted in that coy smile—he knows she will use that power instead to break the walls he's built to protect himself, the monument he's built to a fathomless, nameless shame. He has spent three years throwing himself into danger, but when she looks at him ( _ reaches _ for him, though she does not quite dare to fully close that space) and calls him ‘ _ an innocent man, _ ’ all of that fear and guilt cowers in silence, replaced by this bewitching notion: that he could launch himself into her arms and she'd catch him, gently folding him into her embrace, pressing a soft kiss to his brow.

He does not know what he would make, after all these years, of so soft a landing.

It is an instinct as natural as breathing, then; to reach for her first, when the raven flies into the tavern to sound the alarm. If the guards catch him, then they catch him; Julian has come here to face whatever end. But let her first go safely into the night. Let her be spared his ending if she can—if he is strong enough to protect her from it.

_ Oh,  _ but as he rounds back into the alley and speeds as fast as his legs will carry him, he is thinking of her. He wants to spend the rest of his days (as few in number as they may be) holding her hand and running with her through the city streets under the cool summer night.

It is a love affair neither of them can afford. It would not do, for Julian to fall in love now, poised as he is with one foot in the grave. Worse, it would put her— _ Aredhel— _ in danger. And for what? Only a matter of time before he hangs. If not sooner: it won’t take her long, probably, to realize how undeserving he is of her sympathy and kindness both. This thing—despite the nothing that it is—would only end in more pain and failure, if he pursued it. Another reason to feel guilty: tangling her up in his mess.

(But still, the seed is planted: he wants to see her again.)

Since returning to Vesuvia, Julian has given chase to the palace guards more than once. The fleeing is familiar, always lined with the sweet possibility of capture. An end, at last, to his searching—so close to his own destruction. But after his farewell at the Rowdy Raven, that thought tastes bitter. That night, he runs harder and farther than he has yet. A renewed haste in his steps; a new reason to evade capture.

_ “You will not have me, not tonight, not yet. Nyet—this is not how this will end.” _

  
  


This is how it is: Julian Devorak can remember, with keen accuracy (if he does say so himself) the details of his youth, not accounting for exaggerations that may or may not occur in the spontaneity of the retelling, to add to the effect of a tale. If asked, he could produce a rough sketch of first two decades of his life—his childhood in Nevivon, his apprenticeship with Doctor Satrinava in Prakra, his years as a field surgeon in the southern wars—right up until he stepped foot off the boat into Vesuvia.

Then, the picture of his past becomes imperfect.

Those memories are… mottled, patches of light and darkness, like sunlight falling through a thick canopy of trees. What he can recall is hardly more than fragments, scraps of a shredded tapestry. He knows he must have been part of something terrible—from where else comes this shame, and guilt, and grief, that has hung heavy around his neck since he fled Veusvia’s borders?—but after three years he is no closer to finding out  _ what _ precisely he did. Whatever sins he may have committed, his knowledge of them is buried so deeply inside of him that often he thinks he is better off, not knowing.

But that… that sound, the chime of the bell over the door of Mooney’s Apothecary, announcing his entrance… Julian remembers that. And like few things he remembers from those days, he remembers the sound warmly. He had arrived here, once, and been welcomed.

( _ By Asra…? _ )

But this morning, no one answers the call of the bell; neither Asra nor his apprentice come to the stairs to investigate. He is alone.

Gently, Julian closes and locks the door behind him.

His life in Vesuvia is like a dream, already half-forgotten upon waking, but he remembers this. This place. Three years have passed, but Mooney’s Apothecary is just as he recalls. Gods, even the  _ smell _ of it—Julian pulls off his gloves and drops to his knees. The texture of the painted tile beneath his fingers… why is that, of all things, familiar? The same wares line the shelves: talismans, tinctures, carefully bundled and braided herbs, extracts. The charred mark on the wallpaper behind the till—Julian remembers that.

...how much time did he spend here? He’s not even sure he has a right to feel quite so nostalgic, now that he’s returned. Maybe he only feels so sensitive here because it is one of the few places he  _ can _ remember. Here, the holes in his memory seem thinner… as though, with enough effort, he might reach into their depths and pull his memories back to the surface. He parts the beaded curtains of the cardroom and here (just as two nights ago, when Aredhel had read his cards) his skin turns to gooseflesh, and the hairs on his neck and the back of his arms stands on end… he scratches, faintly, at the column of his neck.

( _ rain on the window, an argument, picking nail beds by the window while a storm disturbs the harbor _ )

The second floor, though—that’s not quite so familiar.

This is because, he assumes, of all the possessions that do  _ not _ belong to Asra. Surely, Julian thinks, he’s been up here before (he does, after all, have a key.) He recalls the wooden grain of the kitchen table, and the colored glass that hangs in the window. But throughout the room—the kitchen, the bed, the shelves—are scattered items that feel as though they do not quite belong. They feel… not quite right.

Like here, in the wardrobe half-stuffed with books—Julian’s bare fingers find the rough cotton of a ruffled black dress. This, he guesses, must belong to Aredhel.

Last night, after he had returned safely to Mazelinka’s, Julian had not allowed himself to think of her at all. He had not allowed his mouth to form the shape of her name; he had not summoned to mind the image of her, golden hair and rosy cheeks in the tavern light. Julian Devorak has only returned to Vesuvia to clean up his mess—to bring his story full cycle, to whatever end that leads. The last thing he needs to do is drag someone else into danger with him… especially not Asra’s apprentice, of all people.

But isn’t his insistent and repeated refusal to permit himself to think of her a way of keeping her present in his thoughts? Since he met her in the shop he has spent the last few days swinging around her in an uneven orbit. Aphelion, perihelion: nearer and far, he has circled her throughout, torn between two competing impulses.  _ Fickle.  _ As he had in the tavern when the raven sounded the alarm, he wants to protect her, keep her close enough that he can look after her. (To hold her. To be looked at again like still has a chance.) And yet (and at this thought, he withdraws,  _ ‘do not even think of her name’ _ ) he cannot shake the feeling that the best way to protect her is to keep Aredhel as far away from him as possible.

(That the best way to protect  _ himself _ is to keep Aredhel as far away from  _ him _ as possible.)

No, it would not do, to fall in love with one foot in the grave. Still, such a delight, finding her, here, at the end; Julian is not sure he deserves it.

He runs his thumb over the black cotton once more with a fond smile. This dress would suit her far better than that red fussy thing she’d been wearing last night, no matter how becoming she may have looked in it. He imagines a sea breeze lifting the hem around her knees like a tide; he can picture her laughing—

A sharp pain between his eyes—Julian shivers, drops the dress to hang in the wardrobe.

He shouldn’t be here.

Nothing he’s found so far has done anything to jog his memory, or to suggest where Asra has gone or when he might return. The failure tastes familiar. He is not likely to find the answers he seeks poking around in their wardrobe; he should leave Asra and Aredhel their privacy, and sneak out of the house before the market nearby begins in earnest. There is nothing waiting for him, in this house; it is just an empty hope, a broken promise.

(And no sign of Aredhel. Although that, too, is probably for the best.)

  
  
  


Perihelion— _ there she is! _ Magic or gravity or some other mysterious, inexplicable force setting her in his path, again; when he opens the door to slip away from Mooney’s Apothecary (when the shop bell rings once more) he finds her on the threshold. Bright and warm as the dawn cracks the horizon at sea, Aredhel stands before him. 

His search of the apothecary and her home above has yielded nothing: Julian has no proof that she is the cause of his night terrors. He has no  _ real  _ reason to believe she is dangerous. He knows, really, nothing about her at all… but if he can, if he is offered the chance, Julian would like to find out. He will burn to behold her, if he must; he will let his wings melt and plummet into the sea just to draw as near as he can to her warmth. 

( _ To whatever end—so be it. _ )

And she… oh, she looks altogether far too pleased to see him, which makes her sudden arrival all the sweeter. Her eyes are glimmering, glad; the corners of her mouth lift into a smile as she shapes the sound of his name:

“Julian?” 

She calls him so softly, as though she does not quite believe she has found him, again. ( _ How long have we been apart this time? She returns to me with the dawn. _ ) But then she shakes the surprise and the warmth fall from her face like a dog shakes himself dry, and she scowls, crowding him into the shadows of the doorway. She pins him to the door with a fist in his waistcoat, before craning her neck, leaning backwards to past furtive glances into the alley.

(Those glances are almost more delightful than the press of her fist to his shoulder. He cannot keep affection out of his grin; such tenderness, betrayed in her concern. She is checking the street for passersby to protect  _ him,  _ not herself; if Julian had any doubt, it is eradicated the moment she opens her mouth.)

“Julian, you have to be more  _ careful _ ,” Aredhel hisses, turning back to face him. “I rode here with the palace servants. They are all in the market—they are here to make an announcement. If they see you, I won’t be able to—”

“You’re seeing me,” Julian replies, still grinning, quirking a brow. “You don’t seem too upset about it.”

Aredhel stares at him, speechless—mouth open, eyes fixed. Then she huffs lightly in defeat, her eyes sliding away as her lips curl in a smile. “I’m relieved, to see you safe,” she admits, meeting his eye. But then her contentment falls away, replaced with a look of irritation that seems at least half-feigned. 

“But I am  _ not _ pleased to find you sneaking out of my shop again.” She nods behind him with a sharp jut of her chin. “That door has roughly three decades worth of hexes on it. Asra tells me it took a man’s arm off once. Breaking in shouldn’t be possible.”

Her glare cuts him. Only three times he’s met her, hardly more than a how-do-you-do between them, and already he finds he does not want to disappoint her. He likes not the look of suspicion she gives him, even less the idea that such suspicion might lead to distrust—though, really, she would have to be a fool to trust him, and she seems anything but. Still, he had left the apothecary resolved he would not visit again. It will cost him nothing, now, to turn over his key, to give her the peace of mind that rowdy fugitives and all kinds of washed-up characters have found a way to go about invading her home. 

(That’s really want it is, isn’t it? He would hate for her to feel unsafe in her own home because of him.)

“I haven’t been breaking in,” he says, pulling the key from his pocket it. For three years, he has carried it; for some of that time, he had not even been able to remember what door it unlocked. Since he had left Vesuvia it had been one of the few hints he had to the answers he sought… but in the end, that hope had proved fruitless. There had been nothing in the house to help him, nothing in the apothecary that jogged his memory. Julian does not spare the key (false idol that it has proved to be) so much as a final glance before he holds it out to Aredhel, palm opened.

“Take it, if it makes any difference. I won't be using it again.”

Aredhel frowns. She’s made a show of scolding him—for not being as careful enough, for ‘breaking in’ to her shop again—but this is the first time that she looks  _ genuinely _ displeased. The crease between her brow only deepens as she pinches the metal between forefinger and thumb, rubbing the pad of her fingers along the key’s teeth. 

“This is not a forgery. Who gave this to you?”

“Ah, well— _ that. _ Yes.” She asks him the simplest of questions and all Julian can manage in reply is hand-waving and filler, nothing but empty words. “Asra and I used to be…” Used to be what? Julian’s not sure himself. He can remember Asra’s fingers threaded through his hair, the thunk (and the resulting sweet ache) of his knees against the cardroom floor… the act of consummating that desire more like worship than wantonness. Just as keenly, though, he can remember Asra’s bitterness, a contempt for Julian that bordered on disdain.  _ Asra and I used to be… _ what, fuckbuddies? That doesn’t quite capture the vitriol between them in the end—and it doesn’t paint Julian himself in the best light.

(She had looked so  _ pleased _ to see him there; how warm it had felt. She had smiled when she’d called his name. Woefully self-conscious, he does not want to say anything that would make her less pleased to be in his company.)

“...well, it was before your time, I suppose,” he concludes, weakly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Aredhel’s brow lifts, dubious, but she tucks the key into the pocket of her skirts all the same. The depth of her frown does not diminish.

“You said you would not be using the key again. Why?” Her fingers wind a little tighter in the lapel of his waistcoat. “Have you found whatever it was you were looking for in my home?”

Her hand is still on his shoulder, crowding him into the darkness on the doorstep and out of view of the street beyond. They are pressed so close… inches closer, and she would be flush to him. 

Julian knows—he should not get Aredhel tangled in his mess. Not merely because he is certain it would provoke the fury of her master, but because Julian knows himself: knows he is already too fond of her, knows that the burden of his guilt (already so heavy) would become unendurable if any harm came to her because of him. The noble thing to do—the  _ right _ thing to do—would be to discourage such proximity between them. To push her away before it is too late and she ends up hanging alongside him.

...But would it be unforgivably selfish, if he would like to be touched tenderly at least once more before the palace guards seize him, before the hands of the executioner snatch him?

(It begins as a test:  _ will you be as gentle with me as your smile has promised? _ )

“Oh, I hope you don’t think I’m a thief,” he retorts, with a sneer designed to rile her. “I’m many things, but I’m not that. But then again, you wouldn't take my word for it, would you?”

He shrugs his coat from his shoulders, then unbuttons his waistcoat until it is loose and it falls, too. The fabric pools on the threshold around his ankles; opening his arms, Julian offers his body for inspection. 

( _ Will you be gentle with me? Or am I wrong, as always—will you, too, leave me ruined? _ )

He provokes her further: “Search until you’re satisfied.”

Aredhel’s eyes narrow, a look of amusement on her face, but as soon as Julian thinks she is going to brush off the offer with a cutting and flippant quip, she advances upon him, crowding him closer against the wall. This time she does not spare a glance to the alley for caution: her eyes are fixed only on his. Tentatively, her hand lights on his hip, a five-pointed constellation of brilliant contact that was  _ too  _ gentle, and not nearly enough. 

Very well. If it’s encouragement she is looking for, she’ll have it.

“No need to be shy,” Julian murmurs, pressing off the door and into her touch. He is close enough now to dip his head towards hers, and he brings his lips close to her ear to whisper: “ _ I promise I’ll be good. _ ”

Aredhel laughs, brightly. Both hands find opposite hips then creep upward, along his stomach and across his chest, and it wrests a delighted shiver from him that he cannot (and does not attempt to) suppress. Her fingers find the lapels of his white gauze shirt and smooth them over his collar bones. “What good is such a promise,” she asks, her words hot on his ear, “when you yourself last night admitted that half the city believes you to be wicked?”

“Half the city, maybe,” Julian concedes. An uninvited warmth in his voice when he adds, “But not you.”

Aredhel pulls away, far enough to look him in the face, to widen her smile in reply—it quickens the beat of his heart. 

“Perhaps.” Her fingertips lift to his neck, straighten his floppy collar around it before they trace from his neck to his shoulders. Her palms round his shoulders before they pat down each of his arms. She teases him as she searches: “But I don’t know the first thing about you, do I? Though I seriously doubt a wicked man would have stuck his neck out as you did, making sure I found my way safely last night. Unless, of course, you were just looking for an excuse to hold me.” Her eyes flicker to meet his, deep green and full of indecent mirth, before her fingers spread over his sides once more.

By some miracle, he manages to bite back his groan; he knows there is nothing to be done about the heat blushing his cheeks.

Julian Devorak is a dead man. Who is she, this apprentice of Asra’s who dares to set his heart fluttering? Who is she to remind him it yet beats, that he yet breathes? ( _ You are only one foot in the grave; you are not dead yet. _ ) His mouth is dry; he wets his lips, before swaying towards her touch. Barely more than a whisper, he asks her, eye lidded, “Would I need an excuse?”

The tips of her fingers skirt beneath the hem of his shirt. They trace thoughtful circles over his ribs, as if she is considering her answer. Then her palm falls firm and steady on his waist, and she does not reply so much as command:

“Turn around. Hands on the door.”

Julian plants his gloved hands flat on the wood; her own fall again to his hips, trailing down the sides of his legs before both clap against the leather of his boot, checking the shape of the shaft for smuggled plunder. As she makes her way down his left leg (especially thorough, he notes, around the width of his thigh) she releases a ragged sigh. 

“If you weren’t stealing anything, what  _ were _ you looking for in there?”

Julian’s eyes fix on the wood grain. The levity and the delight of finding her again dulls, a little bit, in the face of her question. “Explanations,” he tells her, dryly. “Answers. Nothing I found.”

Her hands squeeze his ankle, then rise to the thigh of his right leg. “Were you expecting Asra?”

“No. Not necessarily. I don’t think I’ll find him unless he wants to be found… and after all these years, I wouldn't be surprised if your master wants nothing to do with me.” 

Behind him, Aredhel rises out of her crouch and back onto her feet. Her fingertips find the small of his back and run up his spine, more soothing than searching, Julian thinks, by the feel of their touch. He tremors beneath it.

“Turn back around?”

(The second time it comes as a request, not a command.)

He lifts his hands off the door and turns—she has not backed away from him in the slightest. Her face is full of resigned determination, but her eyes are locked on the column of his throat. She swallows as she reaches for it, then, light as the footsteps of a honeybee as it crawls into the petals of a flower, her fingers find the place where Asra’s magic marks him. So softly her fingers pass over his throat before she nods to herself decidedly, and stuffs her hands back into her pockets.

“I don’t know when Asra will be coming back,” she tells him, fixing her eyes on his, “but at least until he returns, I will help you.”

“You, ah—you’ll what, now?”

(It is a love affair neither of them can afford. She offers generosity and Julian sees only catastrophe: there is only tragedy on this path, and as much as Julian courts tragedy himself, he does not want it for her. He has come to Vesuvia to die.  _ If you give me your heart I will only take it to the grave, clutched in a death-grip beneath six feet of dirt; even your magic cannot forestall the inevitable. Give your kindness to someone else, one who will breathe long enough to repay it. _ )

He is dumb-struck, mute; she ploughs on, anyway.

“Well, whatever it was you were looking for—answers—you did not find them inside my shop. So I will help you keep looking.” Her fists comes free of her pockets; she takes one of his hands in hers, and the other presses the key to the apothecary back into his palm.

“Keep it,” Aredhel insists. “The shop has many protections, all of them quite powerful. You will be safe, here, if you need a place to hide.”

Julian protests—it is the only worthy response. “Oh, no, Aredhel, I can’t. I shouldn’t.” He shakes his head, trying to push the key back into her hands. If he is caught—if the guards finds him—they may find the key on him. What if they can trace it back to her? “I won’t ask you to do that, take a risk like that for me—”

“Please,” Aredhel implores, curling his fingers into a fist around the key. She presses his hand back to his chest with a decisiveness of gesture that brooks no argument.  “I want you to have it.”

Even through the leather of his gloves, he can feel the warmth of her hands around his.

Who is this fierce and reckless creature that Asra has taken into his care? She places the old key back into his palm and she offers him safe harbor. They are pressed so close on the threshold of the apothecary that there is barely space between them; if he so much as breathes more deeply, he may close it. He wants to fold her into his arms—he shouldn’t. His heart—his dead man’s heart—is  _ pounding. _ Her faith in him is undeserved; he will only, inevitably, repay her confidence with betrayal. Unforgivable: he has welcomed her trust, he has longed for her touch, and now she is risking her own safety for him. 

No, he won’t have it. 

“Aredhel, you can’t give me this. You’re putting yourself in danger—”

“I can take care of myself,” she asserts, stooping to collect his waistcoat and his overcoat from the doorstep before pushing his uniform into his arms. “ _ You _ , on the other hand, I worry about.”

Julian laughs. “That’s a terrible idea—worrying about me.”  _ It’s only going to end in disappointment. Better to smother it before it begins. _

Aredhel grins, lopsided and acerbic. “Oh, I’m sure I’ve had worse,” she replies, fingers scratching idly at her chest, just below her collarbone.

“Doubtful,” Julian retorts. “Double crossing the Countess? That’s the kind of bad idea that gets you killed if you get caught. Trust me—of all people, I should know.”

And the bitterness is drawn from her grin, and it widens, crescent-curls into something mischievous and marvelous, bright and self-assured. “That’s only if I get caught,” she replies, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

Her grin is  _ so _ close. “You are persistent, aren’t you?” he asks, as if any amount of persistence could absolve him of his responsibility. He is encouraging a burgeoning affection that he knows he should not. 

But then—is it a trick  of his imagination, or does she lean closer to him? Her nose wrinkles in silent mirth; her hand traces his hip, but this time the touch has nothing to do with searching. 

“I can be, yes,” she grins, “when I know what I want.”

A foolish, brazen notion seized him, then: that he could kiss her, and she would not stop him. 

_ Will you kiss me as gently as your hands searched me? _

He tells himself this much: however his ill-conceived, impetuous gamble goes (no matter what she  _ thinks _ her cards portended) he is a dead man walking; he has returned to Vesuvia possessed of one purpose. Would it be unforgivably selfish, if he were to steal one last kiss before he goes to his death? It does not matter—he will take it anyway.

( _ Ha! I suppose I am a kind of thief, after all. _ )

(Add it to the list of things for which he will not be forgiven: a grain of sand at the top of a dune.)

Quickly, so that he does not lose his nerve, he wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her close, taking her mouth in his.

  
  


( _...what has called me back to the town where I am doomed to hang? _ ) Sweetgrass, golden with autumn; the tickle of it against skin when a breeze sweeps through the plains. Rumpled, soft, and fragrant beneath the bodies it cradles.  _ ‘I never thought I'd see you again.’ ‘Well, that was a silly thing to think.’ _ ( _ splinters in my fists, hoarse from shouting, but I found you, in the end—again _ ) Seawind rocks a boat beneath a night spangled with stars.  _ Paint chipping off the sides of the skiff that cradles us safely through the water, damp in its belly where we lay, side-by-side.  _ Thunder of a distant glacier calving in a densely forested fjord, shuddering across the shelf as the growler falls into an icy sea in a glittering white cloud. A single candle in a window; fresh brewed coffee. ( _ a storm disturbs the harbor but you are safe, kept safe, brought home; I tilt back my head and give my throat up as tribute so that you might pass the night safely _ ) Slanted handwriting, ink illuminated by fitful candlelight in a dark library, all the words in all those books not so precious as the ones he reads in the near-blackness.  _ ‘Did you think I was going to leave you behind?’  _  A soft lap to lay down his head; nimble fingers through his hair. The smell of rain and loam, and the tree-giants of Hjalnir, scraping the sky. The great roar of a river, frothing and foaming as it surges to the embrace of the sea:  _ ‘I am not leaving without you this time.’ _

  
  


He had come to her like he comes to a knife; a sharp edge to bash himself against, to split him, break him. And what does he find instead? On the back of his eyelids her kiss paints pictures.  _ What is this illusion? _ A false paradise: he has been to each of those places and found nothing but emptiness. Why, then, in the vision she creates, do they feel so full of possibility, and freedom, and  _ life _ ?

Her mouth is soft and generous but he flinches from it. His heart is pounding in his chest, a rhythm of fear and outrage, and wonder and hunger. When is the last time his skin felt like this, tingling and fit to split with the storm of emotion roiling inside of him? She has bewitched him somehow—she must have. If Asra could place this mark upon his neck surely it is not beyond his apprentice to perform such a spell. A kind of illusion, or— or  _ seduction _ , perhaps, she’s—

...but she’s wide-eyed and shocked, uncertain. A blush spreads across her cheeks, and her eyes lower to his mouth... she gazes at it longingly, as she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and tugs. 

If he kisses her a second time, he wonders, will the same vision overtake him?

(What frightful, exacting, stirring magic. If he dies—at her hand, under her magic—in the midst of such magnificent visions, would that really be more terrible than dying at the gallows?  _ So be it. _ Let her magnificent, kaleidoscopic hunger devour him—)

Gently, he places a hand on her hip. He bows his head towards hers, and he thrills at the way her breath hitches as he draws her closer.

“ _ Ilya? _ ” 

The sound of his old name pulls him out of her embrace, but he tightens his grip on Aredhel’s waist. Someone has recognized him;  _ he has been found _ . Nevermind, he will hold them off. He will throw himself between Aredhel whomever has named him; he will put on a great show until Aredhel makes a safe retreat—

He is never given the chance. Aredhel stiffens at the sound of their voice; she’s blushing, lips spit-slicked, but her expression turns grim, and when she turns in his arms her stance widens into something defensive. She blocks his body with her own.

(Who is this fierce and reckless creature that Asra has taken into his care? Still-bewitching notion: that he could launch himself into her arms and she'd catch him.)

But over Aredhel’s shoulder, wide-eyes framed with auburn curls, he sees not the face of an enemy, but that of his sister.

“Ilya?! Is it really you?”

Pasha’s shorter than Aredhel but she is unfazed by the apprentice’s height; she barrels right past her, and—perhaps moved by the relief in Pasha’s voice, or the tears in her eyes—Aredhel lets her. Portia’s fingers find his ear and give it a tug— _ familiar, _ his grandmothers used to chastise him just the same way. He winces; the force of her fingers leaves his eye watering.

“You’ve grown up strong, Pasha.”

“What were you  _ thinking _ ? Out in the open where anyone could see you—are you looking to get killed?”

Funny—Aredhel had chastised him just the same. His eye is fixed on Portia’s, blue and teary, but out of the corner of his vision, a vibrating—briefly he tears his gaze away from his sister and finds Aredhel, body shaking with silently laughter, a look on her face as if to say, ‘ _ I told you so. _ ’ She brushes her lips with her fingertips. As Portia hurries him into a dark alley and out of sight, the last thing he can see is Aredhel on the threshold of Mooney’s Apothecary, blowing him a kiss goodbye. 

‘ _ Are you looking to get killed _ ?’ Well, he certainly _ had _ been. Now, though… he’s not so sure. 

“You- you- you  _ bastard _ . Unbelievable—incorrigible—you haven’t changed at all, have you? And after eleven years,  _ how _ do I find you? With Aredhel, of all people! Ilya, the Countess has hired her to  _ catch _ you. She wants to  _ hang  _ you—”

His voice in answer is soft, dreamy: “Oh, don’t worry. Aredhel isn’t going to turn me in.”

There’s a faint, half-dazed smile on his lips when his eye finds Portia’s again. Perhaps, of all the kindnesses Asra’s apprentice has paid him already, this is the greatest: when he greets his sister, he can hear the hope in his voice. When he meets little Pasha (no longer so little, all grown) for the first time in eleven years, his is no longer quite so determined (as he had been, when he had returned to this city) to chase down his own death. 

“Hi, Pasha,” he calls, softly, scooping her into a crushing hug before she has the chance to start scolding him again.

  
  


After three years, Julian Devorak had returned to Vesuvia to die; now, he thinks, there’s no need for such haste. ‘ _ I will help you, _ ’ Aredhel had promised, and he’d like to see that through. Whatever answers Vesuvia holds (like a pearl beneath an oyster’s tongue) he will find them, first, before he pitches himself into punishment. He deserves none of the aid that Aredhel has offered him; he is too selfish and weak (and, if he’s being honest, too infatuated) to refuse it. Oh, sure, he will fight— _ aphelion, perihelion, _ he will swing around her both near and at a distance—but he suspects he will keep circling back to her until the day he stops spinning. 

This is how it is going to be: he is going to throw himself into her arms. Without knowing why he is so certain, he trusts she will catch him.

  
  
  


—————————— CODA ——————————

  
  
  


( _ In the skiff, beneath the breaking storm, he held her close. “We're almost there.” She was fever warm against his chest and could only whisper loud enough to be heard above the sea-spray, and the smack of the waves against the sides of the vessel. “It’s okay,” she told him, brushing the tears from his cheeks. “I was not frightened. I knew you would come for me.” _ )

Later, Aredhel will remember: in those weeks she was sick she would sit on the floor beside the open window, arms folded on the windowsill beneath her chin, following the shapes of shadows in the street until she saw his. She would listen for the merry clap of his boots, and the old Nevivon salt-mining song he would hum under his breath, and she would race (despite the ache in her joints) to the sound of a key clicking in the lock and the shop bell jingling. Running to his side, to be sure he was healthy, safe, and whole, even if she was not. She will remember feeling as though there was not enough time to love him as she'd like—then, that there was an infinite wealth of time, all branching green possibility ahead of them, the sweet smell of the distant dark soil where their love might take root—then, suddenly, that there was no time at all. Until now;  _ he has come back _ .  If they want him—the Countess, the Quaestor, the not-quite-dead Count—they will have to rip him from her arms. She will shield him from them; he has been too long alone, he has suffered enough. This time, she will protect him.

Later, Julian will remember: the memories will come back to him as he rediscovers the curves of her body, cherished souvenirs in the twice-beloved folds of her skin. He will come to love her just as recklessly the second time as he had the first, but this time, when he makes her a promise— _ ‘Yes. Anywhere. I’ll go anywhere.’ ‘I want a life with you.  _ _ I’ll find some way to make that happen, no matter what it takes. _ _ ’ _ —he intends to keep it. Golden fields, distant glaciers; when she had kissed him outside the apothecary he had seen only places he had already been. And it will occur to him, later, when he remembers (when he holds her close beside him) that he had spent his years running returning to the very places he had described to her. It will make sense to him then, his old restlessness. He was not running from the law; he was not running from some great and terrible sin. He had run to the arms of the Moonglow Mountains, he had stalked through the oak forests of Hjallnir. He had run  _ from _ nothing; he had been running, in some way he had not yet understood, back to her. She welcomes him into her arms, she smooths the creases from his brow, she puts him at ease, a light cutting through the darkness of three lost years; even before she remembers, she wants to protect him. This time, he will let her.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and... it's done.
> 
> It has been such a pleasure to share this piece with all of you in the last couple of months. This is the first time I have ever finished any piece of writing of such ambitious length, and I credit that largely to the support I received from everyone who was kind enough to leave kudos or a thoughtful comment on this while it was still a WIP, especially those of you who have been with me from the very beginning <3 Thank you for sticking around. 
> 
> Extra special thanks to @cedarmoons for holding my hand while I had a small breakdown about saying goodbye to this story. (I truly loved telling it—I was reluctant to let go.)
> 
> I'm done with this story, but I'm far from done with Julian and Aredhel. In the coming months I look forward to sharing everything that's been put on hold while I wrapped up Grave. If you want to be updated on what I'm working on, you can follow me on tumblr @4biddenleeches, where I yell about writers block and classical music, but mostly Julian.
> 
> UPDATE 3/4/19: I have started another long fic, "Like Fog Through Your Fingers." While it is not a direct sequel to this work, it does feature Julian and Aredhel, getting up to their usual shenanigans. I'm only a few chapters in now, but I've outlined most of the story and I'm really excited to share it. ^-^


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